Whole into Parts
by Marg Hammerman
Summary: Together at last, Kitty and Kurt are enjoying one of the best months of their lives. But with the emergence of the mutant cure and the return of Kitty's ex-lover Peter, will history catch up with them? Continues the stories Parts of a Whole and A Different Sameness.
1. Part One

**All-Ages Summary:** Together at last, Kitty and Kurt are enjoying one of the best months of their lives. But with the emergence of the mutant cure and the return of Kitty's ex-lover Peter, will history catch up with them? Continues _Parts of a Whole_ and _A Different Sameness_.

**Preamble**… You don't have to be intimately familiar with all the ins and outs of X-Men comics to read this story; I tried to make things as "new reader friendly" as possible. Yet for those interested parties, there's a note at the end of each chapter about any comics that were referenced in a significant way. Continuity-wise, I'm considering the first arc of Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men and Nightcrawler's solo series as happening at the same time; it's a minor adjust, but just go with it—it will be worth it for the sake of the story, I promise :)

This story is part 3 of a trilogy. I'd recommend reading _Parts of a Whole_ and _A Different Sameness_ first. Or, if you want to jump right in here, you can always check them out later :) As always, reviews are great, but most of all enjoy!

**Disclaimer #1:** I don't own the X-Men or make a dime from imagining their between-panel exploits.

**Disclaimer #2:** My heroes always practice safe sex.

And finally… A very special thanks to Sundowhn for all your help with the preparation of this story, which is so much stronger for your insight. And to all the peeps over at CBR's Nightcrawler thread: a truly inspirational repository of Nightcrawler wisdom :)

**Whole into Parts**

**PART ONE**

**~ Prologue ~**

_**Then…**_

Midway through the bridge, a set of passing headlights lit up the car's cab just long enough for Kitty to catch more than a glimpse in the rear-view mirror of Amanda pressing Kurt's body into the corner of the backseat, tilting his fedora up off his head as she angled in to seal her open mouth against his, her fingertips running slowly down the lapel of his trench coat.

"Gross!" Kitty protested, covering her face with her hands while continuing to peek out through a gap between her fingers.

As they exited the tunnel back into the intermittent illumination of New York City at night, Amanda dutifully peeled herself off Kurt's body, smiling dreamily as she collapsed back into her own corner.

"Whew!" she exclaimed, exaggeratedly wiping the back of her hand across her brow. "Mr. Wagner, you do go on…"

Kurt smiled back at her, fang-tipped teeth flashing brightly in the streaming lights. "You're not so bad yourself, Ms. Sefton."

"Gross!" Kitty repeated. She turned to Peter in the driver's seat, pleading, "Can't you tell them to keep their hands off each other, at least until I fall asleep during the intermission?"

"But I thought you _liked_ the opera, Katya."

"I _do_. But not when I have to chaperone _this_ clown," said Kitty, tossing an incriminating thumb in Kurt's direction.

"Chaperone!" Kurt echoed, eyebrows raised to incredulous heights. "You're letting this official X-Man status go to your head a bit, hm?"

"I'm not the one necking like a teenager in the backseat!" Kitty shot back.

"Too bad for you," said Kurt, winking at Amanda who blew a kiss back at him.

"Argh!" Kitty grumbled, slouching into her seat and knotting her arms across her chest.

"What does she see in him?" asked Kurt, leaning forward between the seats and looking deliberately back and forth between Kitty's frown of annoyance and Peter's frown of concern. "I mean, when I'm _right here_…"

"Some people have no taste," Amanda agreed, shaking her head in mock lament.

Kitty rolled her eyes dramatically. "Yeah, right. I mean, even if you get past the _looks_…"

"Katya!" Peter chided.

Kitty ignored him. "… there's still the scintillating _personality_ to contend with."

"Ha!" Kurt dove the extra distance forward and planted a lightning-quick kiss on Kitty's cheek, causing Kitty to squeal and aim a half-serious elbow at his already withdrawn face.

"Try that again," she warned, spinning in her seat to glare at him. "And you'll have to do your kissing without _teeth_."

Kurt merely grinned at her threat. "Well, since I'm _taken_, anyway, you could do worse than Piotr, here."

"Kurt…" Peter warned. "Do not antagonize her."

"I wouldn't dream of it. I'm just stating a fact."

"Oh look at that we're here," Kitty declared, quickly and loudly.

Peter pulled the car up to the curb outside the theatre, and Kurt and Amanda got out. He addressed Kurt through the open passenger's window.

"Kitty and I will meet you at the theatre, Kurt, after we park the auto."

Kurt took the opportunity to favour Kitty with one final, mischievous grin. "Don't you two get distracted along the way."

"Kurt!" Kitty cried emphatically, face flushing. "We _wouldn't_!"

"Pity. I would. Hurry up though, the show's about to start."

As Peter pulled the car away from the curb, Kitty's eyes followed Kurt and Amanda as they proceeded into the largely deserted courtyard. Kurt was well bundled up to avoid using his image inducer. Even so, Kitty imagined his tail was acting up under his trench coat, twitching at Amanda's innuendoes and tickling her body secretly when the chance arose…

Peter's rich, accented voice reigned in her galloping thoughts.

"Katya, you should not tease Kurt so."

"What?" she cried, whirling to look at him. "_He_ started it! He _always_ starts it."

"He starts things because he is insecure," Peter said seriously. "And with Kurt and Amanda… Things have not always been easy for them."

Kitty knew Peter's cryptic words were offering her a glimpse into the adult world, the kind of glimpse that seemed to be occurring with ever-greater frequency lately and that Kitty found fascinating, terrifying, and perplexing all at once. Try as she might, however, Kitty found she lacked the tools to know exactly how she should live up to the gravity of Peter's words.

"Okay," she agreed tentatively. "It's just, if he's insecure about the way he looks, why does he draw _attention_ to it?"

"To make it seem like he does not care."

"But… he really _does_ care."

"Da. Is that not obvious?"

Kitty blinked. It wasn't particularly obvious—not to her, anyway. At a loss, she decided to turn the conversation toward something she thought she _could_ understand.

"And you, Piotr Nikolaievitch Rasputin," she said, tongue curling deliciously over the exotic sounds of his full name. "What do _you_ care about?"

"I care about my friends," said Peter, pulling the car into a spot and turning off the engine. "And I care about—"

Kitty silenced him with a chaste kiss at the side of his lips.

"Yes?"

"Come," said Peter, eyes serious, cheek reddened. "Kurt and Amanda are waiting."

[Context for this scene is Uncanny X-Men #177]

**~ Chapter One ~**

_**Now…**_

They were calling it a cure.

48 hours ago, Dr. Kavita Rao had gone on national television and said the mutant strain was a disease. And that she and Benetech Labs had a drug to cure it.

Since then, Kitty, recently appointed student advisor at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, was knee-deep in damage control, doing whatever she could to calm down an understandably anxious student body, reassuring them that their mutant statuses were secure and inalienable. But it wasn't going especially smoothly. The conversation she'd had earlier that day with a student who went by "Wing" had been particularly unsettling.

On a bench outside the Mansion, under a warm sun and a clear sky, Wing had told her about flying with a passionate gleam in his vibrant green eyes.

"When you're flying," he said. "In a very literal sense the world goes away. It makes everything else… smaller. And sort of _okay_, too. It's the most important feeling. I can't lose that."

Kitty had offered him a small, confidant, reassuring smile, as she replied. "Wing, just because someone goes on TV and says they have a 'cure for mutation'… that doesn't mean that it's even true. And if it is… nobody's going to _force_ it on you. Mutants are a community. We're a people, and there's no way anybody can make us be what they want. We stick together and don't panic or overreact… you'll see. We're stronger than this."

Wing had stared at her as if she'd grown a third head. "Miss Pryde… Are you fucking retarded?"

Now, several hours later, in the evening of that same day, Kitty was in the conference room with her team—Scott, Emma, Logan, and Hank—discussing an upcoming raid on Benetech.

"I'm sorry—_Why_ are we doing this again?"

All of Scott, Emma, and Hank exchanged not-unsubtle glances before Hank responded.

"Because we've found some more information about the cure that's not… My analysis indicates that the cure uses mutant DNA samples."

"_Whose_ mutant DNA?" growled Logan.

"We don't know," Emma answered crisply. "_That_ is what we need to find out."

Kitty looked quickly at Scott, who had his head turned deliberately away, and then Logan, who was looking directly at Scott. She felt quite certain she knew the name on the tip of both their tongues.

Scott said, "So we're agreed. We leave at 1100 hours. That's four hours from now. And as I'm sure I don't need to remind you all: until we have some firmer answers about exactly what's going on, we keep this between us. Understood?"

As they dispersed, Kitty was somehow the last person to leave—with one exception.

"Kitty."

Kitty gritted her teeth as she halted mid-step at the threshold of the door. She did her best to wipe her face blank as she turned to confront Emma's impassive facade.

"Yes?"

"Tell me," Emma began, dropping her eyes as she ran a long, tapered index finger along the edge of the desk, flicking away an invisible piece of dust. "How is your new pet doing?"

Kitty arched an eyebrow. "You can't possibly mean my boyfriend."

Emma looked up. "I mean Kurt," she clarified helpfully.

"My _boyfriend_ is fine. Thanks for the concern."

Kitty turned decisively to leave, but Emma curled her fingers over her shoulder, stopping her.

"Kitty… You have no idea how hard it is for me to say this but… The two of you seem… happy together."

Kitty pivoted back toward her, at something of a loss at this new turn. "This better not be some kind of telepathic reverse-psychology thing, because I don't—"

"It's an _observation_, Kitty. That's all."

"Okay, Emma," Kitty said dryly, eyes narrowed, studying Emma's stiff, unreadable mouth and shallow, bleach-blue eyes. If she didn't know better, Kitty would have thought she saw a flicker of emotion there—sympathy? regret?—as Emma released her shoulder.

But she wasn't in the mood to analyze it. Grateful simply to be free of the ice queen's clutches, she beat a hasty exit.

Kitty started off down the hall at a blistering pace before realizing she needed a moment to think, to collect herself, before returning to her quarters. Slowing to a purposeful amble, Kitty let her mind reflect back on the whirlwind month that was. A month… Had it only been that long? Just a little more than a month since she returned to the X-Men, and even less time since she and Kurt had woken up together naked in her bed, a situation they'd repeated nearly all the days since.

For Kitty, harder than adjusting to the new dimension of the relationship with one her oldest friends had been trying to communicate the change to others who knew them just as well (if less intimately). Kitty had received more than her fair share of raised eyebrows and wide-eyed stares of incomprehension communicating the inevitably awkward information that, yes, that guy she used to make fun of incessantly _was_ now the person she was having sex with, and yes, she _was_ aware of how such a turn of events resembled the plot of a 40s romantic comedy and/or 90s sitcom. And then there was Rachel's even more unsettling knowing smile…

Thankfully, though, the hubbub died down quickly, X-Men being nothing if not adaptable. Yet Logan still troubled her. The tension in the air every time she and Kurt collided with him was palpable. Based on the fact that Logan behaved normally whenever Kitty saw him alone, she could tell that whatever the issue was, it was a Kurt and Logan thing. Still, Kitty was profoundly uncomfortable and more than a little angry being caught in the middle of it; too often, she felt like a bargaining chip in a game she didn't fully understand. Kurt continued to brush it off, telling her she was imagining things. But Kitty knew there was more to it than Kurt was letting on, and that whatever it was would come to a head sooner or later.

And then there was the "cure." Kitty's heart constricted just thinking about it, not to mention the possibility, however remote, that Jean might somehow be involved…

Kitty heard the shower running as she phased through the door to her quarters. She paused, listening to the sound, a slow, relieved smile spreading over her face, remembering: today was just one bad day among twenty-seven others that amounted to some of the best she'd ever known. She wet her lips with her tongue as she prepared to lose her uncertainty by embracing something—some_one_—she _was_ certain of.

Kitty phased herself out of her clothes even as she passed into the bathroom, allowing all of her pants, sweater, bra, socks, and underwear to crumple to the floor at her feet before re-solidifying to slide open the shower door.

"Need a hand?"

"No," said Kurt, smiling calmly as he made space for her enter. "I could use two."

Kitty soaked her hair and smoothed it away from her face before sliding up against Kurt's soap and water-slick fur, kissing him deeply, wetly, as a warm river collected between her breasts, funnelling down to grease their tightly pressed bodies.

"Where's that tail of yours?"

"Where do you want it to be?"

It was a rhetorical question. Even as he spoke his tail was winding itself around her waist, following a trail of water between her butt cheeks to lift her thigh around his midsection as he leaned back against the wall to accept her weight, sighing into her mouth as she stirred her hands and fingernails through his wet fur, his fang intentionally clipping the edge of her tongue, just the way she liked.

The aftermath was almost as nice, enveloped in a large white bath towel while Kurt dried her, sometimes making her wetter in the process—but she wasn't complaining. By the time they finally left the bathroom, though, Kitty wearing a bathrobe, Kurt with a towel tied around his waist, Kitty felt the outside world creeping back in. She watched Kurt grab some underwear and a fresh white t-shirt from the top drawer of her dresser, biting the inside of her cheek as she watched him put on both, well-oiled muscles and ever-liquid tail bending and stretching beneath his still faintly water-dark indigo fur. For the briefest moment, a hint of her old trepidation returned, her mind and body overwhelmed with the sudden conviction: _nothing human could be so beautiful_.

Kurt caught her eye as he snapped his underwear into place, casual movements adopting a trace of hesitancy under the gaze that she awkwardly blinked away before heading over to sit down on the edge of the bed.

"Is everything okay?" asked Kurt, sitting down next to her. "You seem very… far away all of a sudden."

"It's… Yeah, I'm good. I was just… It's been a long day, you know?"

"I can imagine," Kurt lamented, releasing a low breath. "I've been getting these strange reactions from people—from students—all day. I'm sure they want to ask me about the cure, but I don't think they know how to do it without sounding like they're… Well."

"What?"

"Well, like they're insulting me, I suppose."

Kitty looked at him. Wordlessly, she touched the side of his face, running her fingers over the edge of his pointed ear and imprinting the pout of his lips with her thumb before travelling down to his jaw line, sweeping along the edge before dropping to squeeze the side of his neck. Kurt brushed her fingers with his lips as they passed, but she could tell his heart wasn't in it.

"Everything where it should be?" he joked feebly.

Kitty offered a small, unconvincing smile, even as she dropped her eyes. "Always."

She saw Kurt's hand open and then close against his naked thigh as he considered, then rejected, reaching out to her.

"I'm okay, Katzchen," he said finally.

"I know."

"Even if it works, you know I would never…"

"I know, I know."

Kurt did lean over, then, dropping his forehead against hers and stroking his hand over her damp hair. Kitty breathed deeply as she laid a hand against his chest, feeling the subtle friction of his t-shirt against his fur.

"So was it just dealing with the students that got to you, or…"

"I sort of… I can't tell you yet. We're keeping it under wraps until we—I'm sorry."

"Oh," said Kurt, pulling away. "Okay."

"I'm sorry," she said again, imploring his forgiveness with her eyes. "There must be X.S.E. stuff sometimes that you're not supposed to share with other people."

"Other people," Kurt admitted. "But not you."

Kitty scrunched her eyes shut, grinding her back teeth. "_Please_ don't be like that."

"Like what?"

"Like… _you_. _Please_ don't make me feel any worse about it than I already do. I should be able to tell you—to tell everyone—really soon. Just…" She trailed off as she opened her eyes again into his. "_Please_."

Kurt studied her face, brow creased with concern, but not anger. "Okay," he agreed. "But, there's just one more thing."

"Kurt…"

"Whatever it is," he said, luminous eyes boring into her. "Promise me you'll be careful."

Kitty's lips bent ruefully, appreciating the irony of his concern. Her words, though, were genuine.

"Of course," she promised.

"Anyway," said Kurt, changing tracks as he got to his feet and returned to his clothing stash for some pants. "I really have to get going. I'm supposed to meet that man at the hospital at nine."

"About the… children?"

Kurt nodded. "I'd like to say I'll be back at a time but, well, you know how these things tend to go. Are you…?"

"I'll be… I'm out late tonight, too."

Kurt glanced at her quickly as he buttoned his pants, but, true to his word, he didn't question her.

"If I get back first," he said, "should I wait for you, or…?"

"Only, you know, if you _want_ to…"

Kurt's face ignited into a wide, easy smile that spread like a healing poultice over all her fears.

"Now, Katzchen—what kind of question is that?"

[Kitty's conversation with Wing takes place in Astonishing X-Men #3]

**~ Chapter Two ~**

Kurt watched but didn't see the twilight landscape scrolling by through the window of the hired car Ororo had arranged to take him into the city. Instead, his mind swam with conflicting thoughts and images, though his genuine, serious worries about Kitty, the cure, and his current mission tended to become watery against the background of a certain irrepressible contentment.

Weeks ago, Kitty had been surprised by how easily he'd accepted the change in their relationship, by how untroubled he'd been by the varied reactions and increased scrutiny of their other friends. But from Kurt's standpoint it had seemed simple, especially when compared to everything they'd gone through just to arrive in each other's arms. Even now, thinking of Kitty made everything else seem easier. True, today hadn't been a great day, and it wasn't bound to get much better from the car ride onwards. Yet even fifteen minutes of being engulfed in warm water and Kitty Pryde's body made up for a lot. Life might not be perfect, what with his best friend still not talking to him, having to spend his evening investigating the horrific deaths of twelve children, and renewed attempts to challenge the status of the mutant race using science. But after it was all over, there would still be Kitty's smooth, firm body to come home to, the soothing rhythm of her heartbeat against his skin singing him to sleep.

The sound of the driver clearing his throat wrenched Kurt back to the present.

"Sorry to bother you," the driver began, eyeing Kurt in the rear-view mirror.

"It's okay," Kurt assured him, hoping the driver hadn't construed his erstwhile silence as rudeness. "I was just… thinking."

"'Bout all that stuff with the cure? It's everywhere. Had to turn off the radio just to escape."

Kurt offered a rueful half-smile. "I—Yes, I was thinking about it. A little. As you said, it's unavoidable."

"What I really wanted to ask, though, is—you're one of them, right? One of the X-Men?"

Kurt hesitated slightly. "That's right."

The driver nodded. "I figured. I recognized the lady—Storm, right?—who called. But nobody ever tells me anything. Probably for my own good and all that. But the thing is, I've been watching you back there for twenty minutes now and I can't for the life of me place you. You new?"

It was only then that Kurt remembered he was using his inducer to look life the "human" version of himself. He hadn't resorted to his inducer very often in recent years, doing his level best to present the world with his true face; as Logan had once told him, no one would ever get used to him as long as he continued to hide. Kurt wasn't particularly sure why he'd used his inducer that night, except that the heated cultural climate surrounding the cure almost certainly had something to do with it. Having his deception pointed out, he felt guilty, realizing he'd also deceived himself, passing off premeditation as simple habit.

"It's… I'm using a device. To alter my appearance."

"Oh."

The driver was quiet for a long minute, so that Kurt wondered if the conversation would end there. Finally, though, he spoke up again.

"You're Nightcrawler, right?"

Kurt blinked, slightly taken aback by his apparent notoriety. "Ja."

"Ha! I knew it. It's the accent. I knew he's—you're—German, so I took a chance."

"Oh."

Kurt wanted to ask the driver how he knew where Nightcrawler hailed from but he restrained himself, reasoning that it wasn't the type of thing a celebrity should do. He suddenly wondered why he didn't Google himself more often before remembering what happened the last time he'd done so…

"You don't…" the driver cleared his throat. "You don't have to use that thing you're using if… I mean, maybe it's for your mission or something but… I wouldn't want you to have to hide on my account."

Kurt considered the bald spot on the back of the driver's head, hating that he needed to doubt the man's apparent sincerity; after all, the driver could just as easily be digging for a free ticket to the freak show, looking for a good spook story to tell his children over breakfast after the night shift.

Almost as if he perceived Kurt's train of thought, the driver said, "I know how it is with you guys. My family worked for Charlie Xavier's family for years, back before they had me. Then I grew up and… Well, after my parents died, I fell on some hard times. My own fault, just, it happens, you know? And Charlie, he did me a favour. I used to do lots of driving for him, back in the day. But then I moved out to Jersey for my wife's work and—anyway, now I'm back but I'm just doing it part-time while I'm in school. I mean, I like driving, but I don't want to do it forever, right?"

Kurt nodded vaguely as he looked out at the scenery. But he perked up at the driver's next words.

"Charlie, he… Put it this way. He did more than do me a favour—he saved my life. He's… Well, he's a good man."

Kurt returned his gaze to the driver's sincere face in the mirror. "Ja," he said, clicking off his inducer. "He is."

"Jesus!" the driver exclaimed, chuckling. "You're Nightcrawler, all right."

"Kurt."

"What?"

"My name."

"Well I'm Jim. Jim Vanderbeek. Pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise."

"So… what about this cure? Does it work?"

"I can't—"

"Yeah, yeah. I figured. Just thought I'd give it a try."

Jim was quiet for a moment, fingers flexing on the steering wheel.

"If it does work," he said at last, "would you take it?"

Kurt met the flash of his own golden eyes in the mirror. "Would you?"

Jim shrugged nonchalantly. "Depends. I mean, seems like what you've got going must be pretty decent with the ladies. They're all into that Avatar and Twilight stuff. I bet you do okay."

"Um…" Kurt swallowed, equal parts stricken and intensely amused. "…thanks…?"

"No problem," Jim smiled genuinely.

Kurt looked back out the window and covered his mouth with his hand to stop his face from making expressions. He was already imagining how he'd relate the conversation to Kitty.

Thankfully, the next half hour was far more banal, largely consisting of Jim's descriptions of his two school-age, volleyball-obsessed daughters, his accountant wife, and their new townhouse in Brooklyn.

Finally, Jim pulled the car up to the curb outside Metro General Hospital.

"Here you go," he said. "I wasn't paid to wait but I don't mind if you—"

"No, it's okay. In my experience, these things tend to take certain… turns."

"You gonna go in like that?"

Kurt hesitated with his indigo-furred, two-fingered hand on the door handle. "I… ja, I think so."

Recovering quickly and with practiced ease from his momentary indecision, Kurt opened the door and climbed out of the car, crouching back into the open doorway just long enough to flash Jim a winning grin.

"After all," he joked. "It would be tragic if my fans didn't recognize me."

"Too right," Jim agreed seriously. "You gotta milk that. I'm tellin' you."

"Thanks," said Kurt, more genuine than not.

"No," said Jim, turning in his seat to look at him. "Thank _you_."

Kurt nodded once, and closed the door.

As he'd long-since trained himself to do instinctively, Kurt capitalized on his invisible pupils to surreptitiously watch people watching him as he crossed the street and entered the hospital. For people to see him watching them would be disastrous; it made him look suspicious or, worse, nervous. The most powerful defense against freakish-ness, Kurt knew, was to act confident, to project an air of being unaware, or at least unconcerned, about one's obvious bodily difference. Thankfully, most people did seem to ignore him, the world-weary receptionist barely even looking up from her computer as she gestured in the direction of the elevator. Perhaps, Kurt reasoned, he was less impressive than some of the other mutant specimens showing up on the news lately. For those glances that did linger, Kurt did what he always did, offering a small, welcoming smile, letting them know that he saw them staring, and that he didn't care.

Yet when his contact, nurse Christine Palmer, called his name, it was Kurt's turn to do a double-take. Surely, he thought, feeling the blood drain from his face beneath his blue skin, nurses who looked like _that_, wearing uniforms that short—and that _tight_—only appeared in a certain type of movies…

Christine's disarming smile turned Kurt's own tactics back against him, her eyes touring confidently over his person with an interest that was neither fear nor disgust.

Kurt cleared his throat and tried to remember Kitty. And his own name.

[Kurt begins his investigation at the hospital and meets Christine in Nightcrawler #1]

**~ Chapter Three ~**

Kitty was seated at the back of the plane, across from Logan. Hank and Scott were flying, with Emma tucked closely in behind. A slightly eerie quiet permeated the cabin, broken only by occasional exchanges of flight data between Scott and Hank.

Kitty turned to Lockheed, who was perched on her shoulder, his beady, reptilian eyes shooting daggers at Logan. When Logan returned the look, the dragon made a low, rumbling sound in his throat.

Logan said, "Hope your pal there's not thinkin' about a little friendly fire."

Kitty ticked a finger under Lockheed's chin that stopped his noise, though not his expression.

"He's okay," Kitty assured Logan. "Probably just nerves."

"Like all of us, huh?"

"You get nervous, Logan?"

"Everybody gets nervous sometimes, kiddo."

"And are you nervous now?"

"With Easy-Bake Oven over there givin' me the stink eye? I'm peein' my pants."

Kitty's lips twitched as she forced down a sputter of laughter.

Logan, too, offered a brief smile. But his gravity returned with his next words.

"I haven't talked to the elf since…" in an ironic gesture of nerves, he hesitated, eyes unreadable behind his mask."Is he—"

"He's fine," Kitty said quickly, glancing at the back of Emma's seemingly—or perhaps deceptively—oblivious head. "Worried, like the rest of us. But fine."

Logan nodded, and let the issue drop.

When they reached Benetech, Kitty was on point, tasked to make her way undetected into the basement and deal with any and all security measures. After making her way through several rooms and floors and past dozens of oblivious guards, Kitty, with Lockheed in tow, arrived at a deserted corridor from which she proceeded to move further down, through the floor to the next level and whatever lay underneath. On her first attempt, she phased at least a dozen feet down into the floor and got nowhere; there was nothing but solid metal in every direction. And not just any metal; as she phased through it, it felt strange—thick, almost, or at least thicker than any metal should ever feel when she was in her phased state.

She returned to the main corridor and said her goodbyes to Lockheed before trying again. It seemed to take forever. There was at least one hundred feet of metal guarding what must be a truly priceless—or truly dangerous—secret.

Finally, Kitty felt her feet touch open air, and lowered herself gratefully into a wide, metal-lined corridor. Stealthily avoiding a pack of guards, she moved instinctively forward, toward a large door at the end of the hallway that seemed to be the focus of the guards' protection. In abeyance to the old adage about the enemy of an enemy, Kitty fought off the disquieting sensation in her muscles, still rubbery after passing through the seemingly endless expanse of alien metal, and phased her hand through the door's thick lock, which swung open just as the guards turned the corner.

"We have a hostile!"

"Drop her! _Drop her_!"

The bullet whizzed painlessly through Kitty only to collide with a loud "klang" against the metal surface in front of her, a surface that Kitty realized all in a moment was not a wall—it was a body.

Kitty's breath evaporated from her lungs even as her heart exploded in her chest. She froze, stock still, watching his massive steel body dive at and through her, dispatching the guards with brutal efficiency.

"Peter…?"

Kitty's breath returned to her amid the penetrating reality of the guards' bones shattering against the walls.

"Stop, Peter… Please stop… You'll kill them…"

Releasing the last guard, Peter turned to her, dropping his metal armour to reveal his too-familiar pale grey eyes. He stumbled toward her like a man in a dream.

"Katya?"

He dropped to his knees at her feet as a sob wracked his body, gripping the back of her legs as he pressed his face against her stomach.

"Oh God… Finally…"

Three hours later, Kitty was back at the Mansion, back in the blessed quiet, dark, and safety of her quarters, exploding spaceships, rampaging mutant hoards, corrupt S.H.E.I.L.D. agents, and a previously presumed dead ex-love of her life seeming very far away—dreamlike compared to the dreaming body in her bed, indigo chest rising and falling in oblivious regularity.

For a moment, her relief was tangible, like being wrapped up in a warm quilt after coming in from the cold. But as she approached the bed, watching, depending on the sureness of Kurt's body, a change came over her. The more she looked at him, the less she seemed to be able to see him. Sections of his exposed upper body were enveloped—erased—in shadow, an effect of his light-refracting fur. Kitty was familiar with the sight, and yet it struck her cold; it washed over her, chilling her down to her bones, the feeling that Kurt was disappearing, fading into the ether. Like a ghost. Or a memory…

Lacking the bodily control to phase out of her uniform, Kitty fought trembling hands as she undressed the old fashioned way before slipping into bed next to him, rubbing her face against the back of his neck and kissing him behind his ear, luxuriating in the assurance of his solidity. Kurt stirred groggily, a low moan of contentment rumbling in his throat.

"Welcome back," he mumbled sleepily.

As he rolled over to collect her in his arms, Kitty flinched at the roughness of his left hand, which she realized was wrapped in a bandage.

"Are you…?"

"Hm? Oh, I burned myself when… I'll tell you about it tomorrow."

Kitty overlapped his hands and forearms, sighing gratefully as she felt the soft friction of his fur against her skin. One of his feet covered hers, reassuring in its uniqueness, as his tail curled itself around her waist, twitching once against her bare stomach before lying still.

"What about you?" Kurt whispered, half-awake, against her ear.

"I'm… I'll tell you about it tomorrow," she said.

But Kurt was already asleep.

[The raid on Benetech where Kitty finds Peter comes from Astonishing X-Men #4]

**~ Chapter Four ~**

When Peter wrapped his strong arms fully around Kurt's much smaller body, lifting him almost off the ground in the intensity of his embrace, Kitty knew Kurt hugged him back just as genuinely. Yet she also knew that when she'd told Kurt that morning of Peter's return, his reaction had been ever so slightly conflicted.

"This doesn't change anything," she'd told him, fingers trailing through his hair.

"Of course," he'd said, eyes not quite completing his attempt at a reassuring smile. "I just don't want you to feel that—"

"This doesn't change _anything_."

"Okay, Katzchen. Okay."

Now, after a long day of training, teaching, medical exams, and general housekeeping, the active, available senior staff were assembled in the conference room to hear Hank and Scott's report on the cure—though of course ceremonies of reunion with an old friend had come first.

Once everyone finally settled down enough to deal with the business at hand, Kitty found herself seated at the long conference table between Kurt and Ororo, and across from Peter and Logan. The other seats were filled by Hank, Scott, Warren, Rachel, Lucas, Emma, and Sam—who Kitty could tell was feeling a little out of place. Everyone was in their casual clothes after a long day, and the effect of that informality was a tad unsettling; it felt a bit like protesting too much against the seriousness of the situation.

"I'll get right to the point," said Hank, who was sitting at the head of the table, next to Scott. "I don't know which is the good news and which the bad, so I'll just say both. First of all, the cure works. Second, all the viable samples and the vast majority of the data Benetech held are now destroyed. But that said, in all likelihood, it will only be a setback. The cure may very well be a reality we'll have to live with, whether we like it or not."

Sam said, "The cure works… how, exactly? What are we actually talkin' about, here? Does it suppress mutant abilities, or…"

Hank shook his head. "It's not like the mutant suppression drugs we've seen before. This drug actually has the power to suppress the mutant gene at a fundamental level, initiating a total physical transformation. Muscles, bone structure—everything is affected."

"And does it work on second generation mutants?" asked Ororo.

"Yes," Hank confirmed. "As far as I can tell, anyone with an X gene is fair game. Though the process would obviously be more… involved… depending on the nature of the mutation—or mutations."

Silence reigned for a moment after that, Kitty noticing more than one body shift uncomfortably in their chair registering the implications of Hank's words.

Finally, Kurt spoke up. "And you have a sample of this drug in the lab right now?"

"I've already raked him over the coals, elf, believe me," said Logan.

"Good," Kurt assented, eyes still grilling Hank.

Hank released a heavy sigh. "Look—what the two of you need to understand is, we need to consider that this might be a good option for some people. For people whose mutations are not… Well, not viable."

"And who decides that?" Kurt questioned.

"The individual, obviously."

"And we're to assume those individuals are making free, culturally unbiased choices?"

Hank's leonine face lowered in his version of a frown. "You've always _had_ your mutations, Kurt. It's not like that for everyone."

"That's true," Kurt conceded, eyes alight with a rare intensity beneath his stern brow. "Unlike some of you, I've never had the luxury of pretending _not_ to be different."

Kitty laid her hand on Kurt's arm. "Kurt…"

But Kurt wasn't finished yet. "That cure… It's _pretending_, Henry. Hiding. There is no 'cure' for who we _are_."

Hank was about to reply but Scott cut in with a raised hand. "Okay. Kurt—we get it. We all know how dangerous this cure is—what a slippery slope it represents. That's precisely why we're having this meeting—so we can all be on the same page about handling this situation as effectively as possible."

Kitty drifted off for the next part of the discussion. She was sure that Kurt would never want the cure. More than that, she was sure that she would never _want_ him to want it. Still, though, she wondered if Hank had a point, especially considering the tragic, desperate mutants who'd accosted them at Benetech the night before. Kitty knew that Kurt wasn't like them. His mutation was useful, viable, _beautiful_. And yet… She couldn't deny that she hadn't always thought that way. There had been a time when Kurt's appearance had terrified her because he represented something she feared she might _become_.

Regarding Kurt's profile now, solemn above his black button-down shirt open at the collarbone and rolled up to his elbows, she couldn't untangle his face's traditionally attractive aspects from the objectively strange ones. Studying him, she couldn't separate any of his graceful cheekbones and aquiline nose, or the shiny strands of his wavy hair spilling over his forehead where they perpetually slipped out from behind his pointed ear, or his indigo fur and flashlight eyes demarked by thin borders of dark, foreboding shadows. Yet even as Kitty told herself she couldn't separate those elements, she found herself doing so, making a clear distinction between his nose and his eyes, eyes that she loved for being so uniquely his, and yet sometimes hated for their mystery. She couldn't deny that his eyes could be a barrier, that her longing to feel and know the depths of her own gaze in his was sometimes rebuffed by their pupil-less, reflection-less surface.

At that moment, though, she didn't need to see Kurt's pupils to know where he was looking, which was straight across the table at Peter. When Kurt blinked his gaze away, apparently returning his attention to Scott at the head of the table, Kitty took his place, swallowing hard against the still-unsettling reality of Peter's living, breathing presence. Everything about him appeared unchanged, from his straight eyebrows to his lantern jaw and the shallow dimple in his chin. Except for his eyes. While Peter's eyes had always been deep with secret gravity, they now appeared truly bottomless, grey-blue wells that would always give the lie to his seemingly impenetrable body.

Peter caught her looking at him, and offered a small, close-lipped smile. Kitty looked away quickly.

"Unless anyone has any other questions," Scott was saying. "I guess we're done here. Hank and I are going to continue to monitor the situation, and we'll keep you all posted of any and all future developments."

As they began to disperse, Kitty could tell that Peter was taking his time, waiting for her. Kurt lingered in turn before Logan rescued him.

"C'mon, elf. I owe you a brew."

Kurt nodded, though he was unable to resist a quick glance backwards at Kitty as he led Logan out of the room.

"Pete," Logan called over his shoulder. "You gonna join us?"

"In a moment, Logan," said Peter, eyes not leaving Kitty's.

Logan closed the door behind him, leaving Kitty and Peter alone in the suddenly cavernous silence. They were both standing, separated by the width of the conference table.

Kitty said, "Before you say whatever it is you want to say, there's something you need to know. Something that I was too bamboozled to tell you last night. You see, I've been… Kurt and I are…"

Peter's eyebrows crawled up into his forehead. "You and… Kurt?"

He paused for a long, incredulous moment before he laughed, voice and body exulting with a rare, consuming mirth.

Kitty seethed with fury, fingernails digging into the palms of her hands, embracing the steadying pain against the nearly overwhelming desire to jump across the table and punch him.

"God _damn_ it, Peter."

Peter's face fell abruptly. "Your are… serious?"

Kitty's eyes darted away. She crossed her arms over her chest, keeping her fists tightly curled.

"Oh Katya," he pleaded, stepping around the end of the table to stand by her side. "I am sorry. Truly. I… I did not think—"

"That's obvious."

Humbled, Peter dropped his head.

After a moment, Kitty took pity on him.

"I know it sounds—" she began, but stopped herself quickly, hating her words' implication of doubt.

"You've been gone for a long time," she finished pathetically.

"Da. I… see."

They were both quiet for another long moment.

"May I tell you something?" he asked.

"I—yes."

"When I was in that room, there were times when I wanted to die. Those times, I would think of your face. Your voice. Your… To see you again, it is…"

"I… I know…"

Touching the side of her face ever so gently with the back of his large hand, Peter bent down, and kissed the side of her lips. Kitty remained perfectly still except for an involuntary, uncontrollable tremor.

**~ Chapter Five ~**

Logan tossed Kurt a beer that he caught with his hand and then passed quickly to his tail to catch the opener.

"Does this mean we're friends again?" Kurt ironized, cracking open the beer before returning it to his hand.

"Ask me again in an hour," said Logan, popping open his own cap with the tip of his claw.

"And do I also have to wait to point out the double standard of—"

"Yes."

"Fine."

Logan took a seat at one of the bar stools behind the kitchen's island counter, while Kurt, wanting to keep his distance, remained standing, leaning up against the cupboard doors on the other side of the island. He crossed his arms, resting his beer against his exposed forearm between frequent, long sips.

Finally, Logan said, "Hell of a thing… Finding Pete…"

"Ja," Kurt agreed. "It's a miracle."

Logan looked at him, frowning. "Don't be weird about it."

"I don't—"

"You know what I mean."

Kurt stared down at his beer, flexing his hand around the neck of the bottle, also frowning. "And how, exactly, am I supposed to _not_ be weird about it?"

"You know what you guys have. You can't let…" Logan hesitated, filling the silence with a gulp of beer. "What's past is past," he finished lamely.

"Easy for you to say."

"_Don't_ ride me, Kurt. I'm trying to help you here."

"Sure."

When Kurt raised his eyes he saw Logan's fierce scowl smouldering with bitter, undisguised aggravation.

"Okay," Logan said tightly through a clenched jaw. "I guess you want me to spell it out. What I'm trying to say is I forgive you. Will you stop being a dick now?"

Kurt shrugged, causing Logan's eyebrows to burrow even deeper into the bridge of his nose.

"Damn, but you can be an ornery bastard when you want to be."

Kurt eyes widened. "_I_ can be—"

"Okay. Just—I'm _sorry_. Okay? Can we _drink_ now?"

"We're already—"

"_Don't_ push it."

Kurt offered another nonchalant shrug. "So would you take it? If you could?"

Logan wrinkled his nose as though disgusted by the question. "You really need to ask me that? You must be more shook up than I thought."

"Since when am I 'shook up'?"

"Since your girlfriend's ex-lover came back from the dead and you pretty much yelled at one of your best friends in a meeting for no good reason."

"_No good reason_?" Kurt echoed, the fuse finally crackling on his own restrained anger and frustration. "Again with the double—"

"It's different for me," Logan interrupted. "Getting in fights is what I do. But it's not like you."

Kurt's golden eyes narrowed above his firm mouth. "Oh? And you're the one who decides that, are you? Is that not what this is really all about? Your belief that you know me better than I know myself?"

Logan glared back at him just a moment longer before dropping his eyes and releasing a weary breath. He raked a slow hand through his thick hair.

"Kurt…" he began again, voice softened as a wave broken on the rocks. "Elf… I…"

But Logan never got a chance to continue his thought, as Peter picked that moment to make his entrance.

"Am I intruding?" he asked, hesitating in the doorway.

"'Course not," Logan assured him, welcoming him in with a sweep of his arm. "Grab yourself a beer. And refill us while you're at it."

Peter dutifully distributed three fresh beers before taking a seat on the stool next to Logan's.

Logan raised his bottle. "Cheers."

The three men exchanged glances as their bottles collided, though all but Logan's eyes—which were locked on Kurt—scuttled away quickly.

After they'd each taken several long, serious tugs on their beers, Logan said, "Just like old times, huh?"

"Da," Peter agreed. "It is as though nothing has changed. Except…"

Kurt worked hard to temper an instinctual urge to disappear as Peter's eyes rolled his way.

"Piotr, I—"

Peter stopped him with a raised hand. "No, Kurt. Please. As Katya says, I have been gone for a long time."

He paused, then, his eyes turning inward on some dark landscape neither Kurt nor Logan could ever know.

"She deserves happiness," he said at last.

"Ja," Kurt agreed tonelessly. "She does."

"So," Logan began, redirecting things toward another, equally fraught terrain. "What do you make of this cure, Pete?"

Peter shook his head slowly, taking a long swallow. "Truthfully, I do not know, Logan. It is too much for me to process, on top of everything."

"Would you take it?" Logan asked, half-seriously.

"_Nyet_. I like my mutation. What I do _not_ like are the problems it has caused for my friends and family. But the cure will do nothing to help that."

"Amen," said Logan, celebrating with a gulp of beer.

Peter turned his attention to Kurt. "But what of you, Kurt? You seemed so sure in the meeting, but I wonder if you are being totally honest."

"You think I want the cure?" Kurt asked.

"No," said Peter. "But I do think you are exaggerating your certainty on the issue."

Kurt eyed him, wondering when he'd gotten so perceptive. "Maybe," he conceded. "But really, I'm like you. I like my mutation. What I don't like is when it becomes a burden—on myself or others."

Peter nodded gravely, but Kurt could tell he suspected the issue was more complicated than he was letting on.

"Well aren't you all a bunch of philosophers," Logan drawled.

"But how is everyone else?" asked Peter, switching tracks. "Emma? Running the school? And she is… with Scott?"

"Yup," Logan confirmed. "Crazy how things come full circle, ain't it?"

"And how is Ororo?"

Logan snorted. "Ororo is as Ororo does. You know—same old."

Peter's eyes grew distant again before he dropped his gaze to his beer.

He said, "I find she looks… older."

"Don't tell her that," Logan joked.

"I do not mean physically. It is just that… I sense you have all been through a lot while I have been gone."

"That's why we're so glad you're back," said Logan. "We could really use an extra pair of hands. Especially ones made out of organic steel."

Peter raised his eyes to Logan's. "Are you seeing anyone, Logan?"

"Next question."

"And Ororo?"

"Really, Piotr," said Kurt, forcing a smile as he re-entered the conversation. "You should know her better than that."

Logan said, "Hard to believe, sometimes, that you guys used to fight over her back in the day."

"I love Ororo as a sister," said Peter. "To think there could have been something more was… misguided."

"What about you, elf?"

Kurt less than subtly redirected the question. "It seems to me that of late, _you've_ been spending more time with her than anyone."

Logan grinned. "What're friends for, right?"

The conversation continued for well over an hour and several more beers with the reminiscences delving further and further into the past, not least of all because they were all deliberately avoiding any reference to Kitty.

"Remember the first time we all went to space?" asked Logan. "There you were, Pete, having a nervous breakdown, and all Kurt here can think about is how jealous his old friends are gonna be when he gets back to Earth and tells 'em about it."

"Kurt has always been a good deal braver than myself, Logan," Peter offered, nodding graciously in Kurt's direction.

"You've developed a sense of humor since last we talked, ja?"

"Ain't that the truth," Logan agreed. "We all remember when Pete saved your petrified blue butt that time you took a jaunt outside the carnival wagon and figured out the hard we weren't on the ground anymore."

Kurt scoffed in mock annoyance. "You try materializing someplace—_anyplace_—you didn't expect after a teleport. It is _not_ a pleasant experience."

"Do not worry, friend Kurt," Peter assured him, fighting back a smile. "I am always happy to help. Especially since you weigh so little."

They all laughed, then, but Kurt's heart wasn't in it. Although he did feel truly grateful for the miracle of his dear friend's resurrection, everything seemed to strike him the wrong way, every joke bearing the ring of an unwelcome double entendre. Each beer and each memory made him feel increasingly unmoored, thrusting him back into situations and eras he was happier leaving behind forever. Also, the more conspicuously absent Kitty was in their remembrances, the more he found himself thinking about her, from the early days but also from two hours before in the conference room, when he'd caught her, out of the corner of his eye, studying himself and Peter in turn. What did she see, he wondered, when she compared them side-by-side? Did she see two different men? A current lover and a former one? One mutation and another?

As he considered the question, Kurt studied Peter's face and body for hints, for the unknowable secret of Kitty's perception. With his broad shoulders, wide forehead, square jaw, blue eyes, and black hair, it was Peter who, out of all the X-Men, most resembled a comic book hero. _He looks like Superman_, Kurt thought. _Like a Russian Superman…_

And the longer Kurt looked the louder Hank's words seemed to resound inside his brain: _"…people whose mutations are not… viable…"_

Kurt's arms contracted tighter around his body, hand clenching the neck of his bottle. He already had a memory of what it felt like without his fur—without his tail—although he usually chose to remember the time he'd had his X gene negated by Mr. Sinister's manipulation of the High Evolutionary's technology as a foggy dream. But in reality, it was a nightmare. And now, it came unbidden to Kurt's mind, the way he'd felt imprisoned within his newly smooth skin, every touch, every step, feeling like a haunting, as though his consciousness were haunting the body of a stranger. Without his tail, he hadn't even been able to walk a straight line; the world was suddenly tilted at an angle for which he was always over-compensating in the wrong direction, a situation his five-toed feet only exacerbated. For a whole week, he'd been tripping over those feet before finally reaching the first stage of acceptance, broken-heartedly admitting that he simply wasn't able to move the way he used to. Yet for someone who had once enjoyed an inborn grace, an almost preturnatural althleticism and agility hardwired into his very genetic structure, such an experience had been beyond humiliating—it had been outright torture.

Truly, every change wrought upon his body had felt like a mutilation; even gaining toes and fingers had felt like losing something. The whole experience had been so objectively appalling that when Kurt thought about it, as when he thought about the cure, it wasn't that he doubted himself—not really. Instead, where doubt crept in was when he considered the decision someone else might make—or thought they might make—if they were in his place, inside his skin. Jim Vanderbeek's good-natured reassurance to the contrary, Kurt felt certain that most people wouldn't hesitate to take the cure; after all, it takes a special person to actually _want_ to be a freak.

And was that, after all, what it was? The world would be safer without mutants, of that there was no doubt. Yet that end did not justify the means of forcing people to abandon the gifts they'd been born with. Still, though, what right did he have to make his own decision, to choose pleasures of the flesh over the needs of the many, the very security and future of the planet? Parsed within such a context, the selfishness of his choice rankled him. If he was being honest with himself, he had to admit that nearly equal with the physical terror of having his body altered was the psychological terror of normalcy, of mediocrity.

Kurt caught his reflection in his beer bottle as he raised it to his lips, his face long and distorted in the green glass. His eyes were bottomless holes in a dark, wavering mass whose edges were defined by points, by sharp ears that seemed as big as his face, and by the glistening, elongated white tip of a fang that flickered into view as he opened his mouth to drink.

Kurt's hand felt unsteady as he completed the difficult task of swallowing. He actually started when he heard Logan speak his name.

"_Kurt_. Hey, elf—you still with us, here?"

"Ja," Kurt breathed. "I just… Maybe I should…"

He was unable to avoid a final, uncomfortable glance at Peter, who respectfully dropped his eyes, perceiving correctly that if Kurt left, he would be going to Kitty's quarters, rather than his own.

On his way out Kurt stopped next to Peter, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"It really is good to have you back," he said genuinely.

"It is good to _be_ back," Peter assured him, briefly covering Kurt's hand with his.

A few minutes later, when Kurt entered Kitty's darkened quarters, his night vision immediately zeroed in on the bed, and on Kitty, fast asleep after a long day and too little rest. She was lying on her side, forming a loose s-curve easily discernible under the thin blankets pouring themselves into wrinkles around her naked body. Her pale right arm and shoulder were outside the blankets, her hand resting on the pillow in front of her face while her wavy, auburn hair splayed out behind her like a sunburst. The loosely-pursed lips of her sleeping face might have been smiling were her oblivion not beyond emotion, embodying something elemental and unnameable. _She looks like an angel_, Kurt thought. But not the kind from Christmas cards or stained-glass windows. No—Kitty's beauty was the true glory of revelation.

Kurt felt almost like an intruder as he made his way slowly, carefully, to the side of the bed, feeling robbed of his usual grace far in excess of his mild intoxication. Pondering her angelic face, he seriously considered backing away, returning by foot or by teleport to his own bed where he'd spent so little time of late. Yet some sixth-sense of Kitty's made his choice for him, as she stirred to wakefulness under his gaze.

She groaned softly, lips curving into an unmistakably contented smile below her heavy-lidded, bleary eyes.

"Hey fuzzy… Welcome back…"

Kurt sat down on the edge of the bed, hoping he was mirroring her calm smile as he touched her face, stroking his fingers tenderly over the tangled strands of her hair.

"Are you coming in here or what?" she kidded dreamily.

Kurt closed his eyes and sank a fang into the inside of his lip as he felt her hand close around the base of his tail. As she swept her fingers down its length, he couldn't resist its relaxing into her grip, succumbing effortlessly to the manipulations of her familiar touch. Even before Kitty paid special attention to massaging around the contours of his tail's tip, Kurt's heart was throbbing between his legs anticipating her, imagining her hands on his body, stoking against the grain at the back of his neck and the base of his spine, imagining, too, her body under his; he could already feel her, supplicating and eager, awash in the past and future reality of her smooth skin sliding against his fur as he burrowed ever deeper into her, her fingers kneading into his buttocks as she threw her left leg over his shoulder and he trailed his lips along her calf before her fingernails raked across his ribs and he felt a low animal moan rise in his throat as his tail lashed desperately against their bodies, begging once more for her steadying hand…

But it was a reluctant desire. He wanted her but didn't want her, or else wanted her in a different way, wishing there was a way he could want her that he could absolutely trust, something less fickle than the primitive rush he'd get from the lustful, sure, confidential way she had of touching his tail, that most animal, least reliable part of him.

Ultimately, he did make love to her, though afterwards he wished he hadn't, even as he knew it had been unavoidable, irresistible. Moving on top of her, he'd had the disturbing sensation of being absent from the scene, of watching himself from a great distance. And the more he tried to focus on the task at hand the further away he seemed to get. He felt the wrong kind of relief when she came and he could allow himself to do the same, a purely obligatory bodily response he barely experienced except to take note of it.

He didn't know—couldn't know—what Kitty was feeling afterwards, couldn't know whether she'd noticed his distress or experienced any of her own. Everything seemed disconcertingly normal, Kitty curled up against his body, fingers stroking through his fur as her breathing grew calm, relaxing into sleep. Kurt stayed awake much longer, incapacitated and anesthetized by warring compulsions to either grip her tightly, desperately against him, or else get up and run, fast and as far away as possible. When he finally did fall into a haunted sleep it was in the wake of the question: how could getting closer make someone seem farther away?

**~End of Part One~**


	2. Part Two

**PART TWO**

**~ Prologue ~**

_**Then…**_

It had been 48 hours. 48 hours since Kurt had woken up, half-alive and half-naked, in a strange public park surrounded by a pack of teenage boys armed with rocks.

Kurt had barely felt the first few blows to his torso, he was already in so much pain. After teleporting away from the robot, Nimrod, his whole body felt dislocated, as though his muscles had been twisted and rearranged on his bones into weird and painful shapes. As he regained a groggy consciousness and tried to get away from the teenagers' blows, he was vaguely surprised he was even able to move, let alone fight. He'd had to, though, when he realized he couldn't teleport.

48 hours and two cracked ribs later, he was wearing stolen clothes and leaning back exhaustedly against a graffiti-smeared brick wall in what seemed like the hundredth alley he'd seen that day. Kurt closed his eyes and tried once again—as he'd been trying every fifteen minutes for the past two days—to access his gift. _Imagine yourself someplace else_. But, just like every other time, when he opened his eyes he was still exactly where he didn't want to be: in the midst of his worst nightmare, alone, hurt, lost, and powerless. And people were following him. No, not people: a mob. For the third time in Kurt's short life, a mob was trying to kill him.

He'd seen it the first time not long after his fight with the boys in the park. While Kurt hadn't emerged from that fight unscathed, he gave as good as he got, confused, desperate to save himself and working against both numbers and his own barely functioning body. No doubt the boys—all angels in their mothers' eyes—had run home battered and bleeding telling wild tales of being attacked by a savage demon who was still at large and likely to hurt more innocent children the longer he was on the loose. "We should call the police," the mothers likely said. "The police?" the fathers would echo, incredulous. "What will they do? Probably think our sons are crazy. The police won't do a damn thing. We need to take this into our own hands." And, just like in the supposedly vanished days of the America Frontier, a posse was quickly organized to hunt and kill an individual for the sake of what members of that posse firmly believed was the public good.

The mob had yet to lay its hands on Kurt, who'd been using his still-functioning abilities of wall-climbing and blending into shadows to stay largely out of sight. But it had seen him at least three times since it first formed, most recently a few hours ago. At that time, Kurt had been seriously considering throwing himself on the mercy of the citizenry in the hopes of securing both medical attention and a phone call to his friends. Yet when he saw how much the mob had grown, any hope of local assistance was dashed. Kurt estimated that the mob now consisted of at least twenty-five people, several of whom had shotguns in addition to bats and homemade clubs. Now, as he cut a stealthy way toward the docks, everything was starting to seem impossible. Getting to a phone would mean going out into the open, as would trying to find a hospital. Besides, given the virulent reaction of the locals, Kurt couldn't be sure the hospital would even take him in or protect him. For all he knew, they might simply hand him over to the mob.

There was also the little matter of his near total exhaustion. For at least the past two hours, it was only adrenaline that had kept Kurt on his feet, and it was a store that was rapidly wearing itself out. By the time he reached the abandoned warehouse, dropping wearily off the wall into yet another alley, he was almost at his limit. He listened for a moment, and then made the risk to turn the corner into the light, hoping to get inside the building and catch a few hours of sleep before he had to start running again. As it turned out, however, he barely managed ten steps before he heard a voice cry out, "_There he is_! There's the mutie! Get him!"

Kurt dodged quickly through the warehouse's broken doorway, but the mob was on him with what seemed like uncanny speed.

"Leave me alone!" he cried vainly. "I've done _nothing_!"

"Get him!"

When something hard collided with his skull, causing him to collapse amid a heap of broken boxes, he wasn't even angry. Instead, he felt almost relieved, knowing that at last it would soon be over. Fighting was out of the question; even if he weren't injured and exhausted, there were too many. As the dark, noisy shadow of the mob closed in around him and he felt other objects collide with his already-battered body, Kurt did feel a brief flicker of regret, thinking that he didn't want to die on his knees. But there were so many of them, and he was so, so tired…

When he saw the heavenly light of the teleport disc and his friends Peter, Kitty, and Illyana drop into the room between himself and the mob, Kurt was sure he was hallucinating. Either that, or he was already dead. It was through the haze of a dream that he saw Peter standing tall before the mob, impossibly intimidating, impenetrable, and heroic, even in his human appearance and civilian clothes.

"Why are you chasing this man?" he heard Peter's booming, Russian-accented voice demand. "Is he a criminal?"

Then Peter was at his side, helping him to stand against his powerful body, and Kurt realized with overwhelming thankfulness and relief that he wasn't dead after all.

"Relax, Kurt," Peter said softly. "I am here, now. We will get you out of here."

"Ja. Danke…"

As he got to his feet, Kurt's head started to clear enough for him to absorb the scene of Kitty taking Peter's place confronting the fury of the mob.

"Human law is for human beings!" a man shouted, brandishing a baseball bat.

Kitty didn't flinch. "Hey, mister—who defines what's human?"

"It's obvious, girl. Just open your eyes!"

"That simple, huh? Well, a whole chunk of my family was murdered in gas chambers because the Nazis said it was just as 'obvious' that Jews weren't human. Is _that_ right?"

"He scared my kids!"

"You scare _me_!" Kitty spat back, staring up definitely into her opponent's bearded face. "Does that give me the right to beat your brains out? You want to prove how big and tough you are, beat up on me! C'mon! What're you waiting for? You're bigger than me and I'm just a girl! Hey, maybe I'm a mutie, too. Ever think of that? Maybe we _all_ are."

Kitty's defense continued. Kurt tried to listen, tried to be proud of her courage, her faith, and her impassioned words. Yet his dominant thought was that he hoped she would wrap it out soon, because he really wanted to go home.

[Part of this scene takes place in Uncanny X-Men #210]

**~ Chapter One ~**

_**Now…**_

"Um… This isn't good."

"What?"

Kitty and Kurt were outside the Dakota Building where a satanic ritual was about to take place to resurrect the last of thirteen demons supposedly banished during the Biblical war in heaven. The life of an innocent boy was at state in addition to countless others should the resurrection prove successful.

"I can't… something is…"

"You can't 'port?"

Kurt shook his head. "Magic, maybe. Or some kind of energy field."

"Let me try."

"Be careful."

Kitty phased effortlessly through the brick wall. After a moment, she peeked her head back outside.

"You coming?"

Kitty watched Kurt grit his teeth before accepting her hand.

"What's the matter?" she teased.

Kurt began outside, "Phasing is…" and completed his sentence inside the foyer. "…weird."

Kitty grinned. "But it's also really _fun_, though."

Kurt didn't get a chance to quip back before the door creaked open at the opposite end of the corridor. They scampered quickly behind the wall, Kitty peering out around the corner.

"Well?" Kurt whispered.

"Two people. Guests. A man and a woman. 40s, 50s."

"That's our ticket in, then. We subdue them, use image inducers to take their place. After that, we proceed with the rest of the plan."

"You still can't 'port?" asked Kitty.

Kurt shook his head.

"Then I'll handle it."

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me."

Kurt nodded, and Kitty disappeared through a nineteenth century portrait of a dapper, mustached gentleman in uniform. Kurt counted off nervous seconds before he saw Kitty's disembodied hand emerge from the wall, clamping over the mouth of the man whose head she slammed against the wall, knocking him instantly unconscious. A split second later, just as the woman turned toward the sound of the man's collapse, Kitty's other fist burst from the wall, striking the unsuspecting woman full in the face, dropping her unceremoniously at her companion's feet. Kurt jogged forward to meet Kitty just as the rest of her body emerged from the wall.

Kurt looked at the pile of unconscious bodies and then back up at Kitty, grinning lopsidedly. "Nice moves."

"Sometimes it's just nice to do things the old fashioned way, you know?"

"In what sense was that the old fashioned way?"

Kurt snapped the guests' images with the inducers. As he handed one off to Kitty, he seized her hand, pulling her in for a passionate, one-armed kiss.

"What was that for?" she asked, releasing a steadying breath against a sudden assault of not-unpleasant light-headedness.

"For luck," he told her, still gripping her tightly against his body. "And because you look beautiful delivering knockout punches to evil, middle-aged dowagers."

"We don't know she was a dowager."

"Don't spoil the moment."

He kissed her again, tenderly, on her temple, before releasing her so they could get down to business.

Engaging their disguises and hurrying up the stairs, Kitty was conscious of the danger, intimately aware that once they reached their destination, they would likely enter some literal approximation of hell. Yet with Kurt by her side, she couldn't resist the flicker of excitement that kindled around her heart. It was a feeling she hadn't had in a long time.

It was also nice, she realized, to spend some time with Kurt outside the bedroom. Strange that she only realized at that moment that her bed and its vicinity was where they'd been spending the vast majority of their time together…

Within fifteen short minutes, it was all over: one abominably evil man dead, one innocent child saved, and thirteen demons re-consigned to lock-up—not to mention Kurt's metal bikini-wearing foster sister/ex-girlfriend returned to Limbo, though not before favouring Kitty with a warm but vaguely disconcerting smile. All things considered, Kitty had to feel fairly satisfied with those results.

"The police have taken the other 'party guests' into custody," Ororo was saying, coming over to where Kitty and Kurt were standing. The rest of the cleanup crew—Logan, Scott, Hank, and Emma—had already boarded the plane to head back home.

"So we're done here?" asked Kurt.

"We're ready to leave as long as you are," said Ororo.

Kitty laid a hand on Kurt's shoulder. "I hope this doesn't sound insensitive, but do you want to stay behind? We booked that hotel room for a base of operations and I just… It would be nice to get away for a bit, you know?"

"I'll have to check with my boss," said Kurt, glancing over at Ororo.

Ororo smiled softly. "Permission granted."

"Great!" exclaimed Kitty. "Let me just go grab our overnight bags out of the jet—I'll be right back."

Left alone together, Kurt and Ororo avoided each other's eyes for a few awkward seconds.

Finally, Ororo said, "You two make a good team."

Kurt looked at her cautiously. "Is that all you were thinking?"

"No. But my other thoughts are private."

"From everyone or just from me?" Kurt asked.

"Is there a difference?"

"Maybe."

"I mean it," she insisted gently. "You seem happy. Happier than I have seen you for some time."

Kurt shifted his weight, eyes flickering down and then up. "You're not… jealous are you?"

Ororo's lips formed a mysterious smile below a raised eyebrow. "Ever the egoist, hm?"

Kurt didn't get the chance to respond, as Kitty returned with the bags.

"You two can find your own way over to the hotel?" Ororo asked.

Kurt held out his white-gloved hand, palm up. "It's three teleports, if the lady is willing."

Kitty made a less than pleased face. "Just this once," she conceded, placing her hand in his. "In the interests of time-saving."

After they exchanged goodbyes with Ororo, Kurt followed the same route they'd taken earlier in the evening, teleporting three times, twice onto pre-determined rooftops and then a third time straight into their hotel room.

Kitty reeled against him as they materialized a final time, stomach swirling. "God…"

"Sorry," Kurt offered. "But you have to admit, it is faster than a cab. Even a New York cab."

"_Especially_ a New York cab. Just give me a second to get my bearings."

Kitty went to sit down on the edge of the bed while Kurt made his way over to the floor-to-ceiling window, keeping, she noticed, carefully behind the wall as he looked out at the cityscape from their 18th floor view. After a few minutes, when the floor once more felt solid under her feet, Kitty came up behind him, letting his tail slip between her legs as she enjoyed the smooth, tight contours of his muscles under the shrink-wrap of his uniform.

"Mmmm…" Kurt leaned back against her body as her hands slipped past his hips, his tail swishing heavily against her inner thigh. "I do so enjoy ending a mission this way."

"Me too," she said, sweeping one hand up the back of his neck, through his hair, kissing the spot she exposed.

Kurt enjoyed the sensation for a moment before he said, "I was kind of hoping, though, that maybe we could… I know it's late, but would you like to go for a walk? I just need to clear my head. After everything."

"Sure," Kitty agreed readily, giving his body a final, affectionate squeeze. "Just let me get changed."

Kitty threw on some dark-wash jeans and a thin, curve-hugging black turtleneck before disappearing into the bathroom to fix her hair, which she tied back into a low, loose, bun, a few wavy strands sneaking out to border her face. When she emerged from the bathroom, Kurt was just finishing getting changed, pulling a dark grey sweater down over his midsection. Kitty slowed and then stopped, succumbing to the orbit of his body, to the tantalizing mixture of the strange and the mundane that was Kurt in casual clothes. As he tightened his belt, her eyes traced a line from his pointed ear down his neck to the impossible softness of the spot where his sweater's v-neck began, grey cashmere wrapping indigo velvet.

"Is something…?"

Kitty blinked, startled by Kurt's concerned and questioning gaze.

"Nothing," she said quickly. "You just… You look good."

When she went to his side, her heart fluttered noticing the way he subtly eyed her, as though he didn't quite trust her words.

"Ready to go?" she asked.

Kurt grabbed his leather jacket from the back of the chair. As he was slipping it on, he also grabbed his inducer from the side table. Kitty's already fluttering heart turned over. She wanted to spend time with him but not like…

"Do you have to…?"

"I don't like it either, but I don't think… under the circumstances…"

"Yeah. Okay."

She swallowed as she watched him disappear before her eyes. His body was right, the shape of his face and his clothes, yet despite all that, it was like looking at a stranger. But at least his hand felt right within hers.

At 11:45 pm on a Sunday in early fall, the downtown streets of the city that never sleeps were about as deserted as they ever became, mostly populated by purposeful individuals hurrying home as well as the odd dawdling couple. Kitty and Kurt walked for several blocks amid cool streetlights and darkened display windows in what Kitty wasn't quite sure was companionable silence. Then Kurt smiled, squeezing her hand.

"I like this," he said.

"What?"

"Being with you. Here. In the real world."

Kitty squeezed his hand back, but wasn't quite able to return the sentiment. She wanted to, but when she looked at Kurt's pink-skinned face the words died in her throat.

"Let's go around the outside of the park," she said. "I've always liked that at night."

When they stopped at a light at Madison and 59th, an old woman wearing many layers of mismatched clothes and pushing an empty, battered shopping cart pulled up next to them. Her eyes roved over them as she smiled.

"Nice night. Pretty couple."

Kitty smiled back politely before they left the woman in their wake. Yet they didn't get much further before being accosted again, this time by a twenty-something girl wearing green-rimmed glasses, a mess of red hair pushed up under an army cap and a heavy-looking DSLR camera around her neck.

"Oh my God!" the girl exclaimed, stopping in her tracks as they approached her. "What a gorgeous couple! This might sound weird, but I'm doing photography at NYU, and would it be okay if I took your picture for my portrait project?"

"Sure," Kitty said quickly, wanting to save Kurt the awkwardness of refusing.

Kitty struck a romantic pose, dropping her face against Kurt's neck, nose ticking his secret fur. The girl snapped the picture with Kurt looking down at Kitty, touching her chin with the tips of two fingers that were really one.

"Beautiful!" the girl enthused. "Thanks. If you give me your email I can send you a copy."

"Don't worry about it," said Kurt, forcing a conciliatory smile. "But thanks, anyway."

"Okay. Thanks again. Have a good night!"

They continued walking, neither of them willing or able to comment on the obvious irony of their back-to-back encounters, or their implications. Yet in the thoughtful silence that ensued, Kitty started snatching glimpses of their reflection. In the past, Kurt's image inducer hadn't been capable of reproducing reflections, a limitation Kitty had actually found comforting; no matter Kurt's disguise, any pane of glass had been capable of reasserting his real, familiar face. But since Kurt had upgraded to a Shi'ar model several years ago, reflective surfaces—not to mention photographs—no longer ruptured the illusion. So Kitty now saw them, as everyone else did, as two humans in love, taking an especially long look in the dim window of an American Apparel, where their ghostly forms were superimposed on faceless mannequins draped in metallic and fluorescent 80s-chic activewear. As Kitty studied their translucent faces and bodies layered over that satiric vision of the past, the question of whether or not she and Kurt made an attractive couple fell by the wayside against the observation that, more than anything, they looked like brother and sister.

As they turned up onto Central Park West, Kurt finally broke the silence.

"Thank you again."

"For what?"

"For helping," he said.

Kitty scoffed. "You make me sound like some sort of hero or something."

"You saved a young boy's life," Kurt said seriously. "I couldn't have done that without you."

"All in a day's work, right?"

Kitty could feel Kurt's gaze hot against her cheek, pleading with her to look at him. Which she did, albeit reluctantly, steeling herself against his black pupils and brown irises.

"Really," he insisted. "Thank you."

Kitty offered a small smile. "It was nice working with you again. I've… I've missed that."

"Just like old times, hm?"

"Well…" Kitty's eyes flickered mischievously. "Not _quite_ like old times…"

Kurt smiled. "No, you're right. It was better."

They were walking on the east side of Central Park West, past the impressive, stone-façade buildings that bordered the park, itself dark and mysterious across the wide, empty lanes of traffic to their right. The horseback statue of Teddy Roosevelt marking the entrance to the Museum of Natural History had just come into view ahead of them.

"When I first came to this city," Kurt said, "it seemed unreal. Even growing up in Germany, even living miles away from any kind of proper civilization, I knew all of these streets before I ever saw them in the flesh. This whole city, it's like one big movie set. In a way, it still seems a bit unreal."

Kurt's words hit Kitty in the wrong way. "It's just buildings," she said flatly. "Buildings and people."

He glanced at her, a small, amused smile bending his lips. "Getting cynical in your old age, aren't you?"

"I'm sorry. I—Hey."

In an abrupt, decisive motion, she wheeled him around the base of the statue to face her, wrapping her arms around the back of his neck, fingers tickling his invisible fur even as she felt his invisible tail brush against the back of her legs, making a large, invisible curve around their bodies. Kitty closed her eyes, imprinting his real face on the back of her closed eyelids.

"Say something," she said.

"What would you like me to say?" Kurt asked softly, sliding his hands under her jacket into the small of her back.

"Something. Anything. Something romantic—you're good at that type of thing."

Kurt ran his hands up and down her back, weaving between her vertebrae with his thumb. "I love you."

All at once, Kitty stopped breathing. Forgot _how_ to breathe. Forgot the existence of breathing or the need of it.

"Katzchen…?"

Dropping her stomach against his, she leaned up and kissed him—deeply, and with all the desperation of wanting a kiss to solve everything, of trying to expel all the conflicts of reality under the unifying force of romance. For a moment, it seemed to work. She forgot where they were, forgot Peter, the cure, and even the X-Men. For one precious, fleeting moment, she forgot everything except Kurt, the friction of his tongue against hers, the warmth of his body, and the grounding stability of his one-of-a-kind hands holding her close.

But then she remembered about breathing, and had to pull away. And that's when she remembered everything. Pulling away, she remembered she was kissing a stranger. More than that, she remembered she was being _forced_ to kiss a stranger because of the same people who wanted to wipe mutants out as a species. And then she remembered her conversation with Wing, and she realized he had been right, because she was worried about it, too—that somehow, someway, the cure was the world trying to take Kurt away from her, looking at his beautiful, heart-breaking uniqueness and saying "no," denying it, silencing it, _erasing_ it, altering the very structure of his bones because of fear, the same fear she'd once known a sliver of within her own heart.

Frantically, she pulled his face down toward her again. As they were kissing, she snuck her hand inside the pocket of his jacket, to where he kept his inducer. Without Kurt knowing it, she clicked it off.

That time, when she pulled away into a vision of Kurt's shadow-dark indigo fur and gleaming golden eyes, she felt the shattered pieces of her heart and mind regrouping, sighing gratefully as she stroked her fingers down the edge of his beloved face.

"That's better…"

Kurt's eyes narrowed, sensing the change in her. "What—"

But he didn't get any further before a hoarse, frenzied voice cried out, "The devil! _The devil!_"

It was the same old woman they'd seen at the beginning of their walk. She'd stopped dead in her tracks watching them, hands quaking on the handle of her rickety shopping cart.

"The devil! Before my eyes he changed, he—The devil! _The devil!_"

Kurt glanced down at himself quickly. Kitty wondered whether anything could ever hurt more than they truly demonic way he glared at her when he realized what she'd done.

Within moments, a small crowd of people had started to gather around, emerging magically from hidden crevices of the erstwhile deserted street. Some of them tried to calm down the old woman, who continued to cry out but had moved on to fractured passages from the Bible, her whole body trembling in the grip of irrational terror. Most people, however, merely stood around gaping, transfixed by the spectacle of an indigo-furred, fork-tailed demon in street-clothes with his misshaped hands clutching the body of a pretty, young, human girl.

Kurt gave the gathering crowd a long, defiant look, though Kitty could tell his anger wasn't just for them. And that he wasn't just angry.

"Come on," he said. "We need to get out of here."

He teleported them well behind the crowd and pulled her into an alley, re-activating his inducer before leading her down a cross street and into another alley, all the while moving with a careful, deliberate casualness that belied the intensity of his expression, discernible even through the veil of the inducer.

"Kurt… Kurt, I'm sorry… I just…"

"We'll talk about it later," he said sharply.

"But—"

"_Later_."

Kitty wrenched herself back in his grip, stopping him. "No. If we wait you won't—"

Kurt released her, stepping away from her body. "If you're going to tell me what I will or won't do—don't. I am _very_ tired of being told my mind this week."

"I'm not trying to… I'm just… I want to try and explain why I—"

"What could _possibly_—"

"Kurt, I was _scared_. Okay? I was…"

She trailed off helplessly, eyes retreating guiltily from the fury of Kurt's angry, incredulous disbelief.

"_Scared_?" he echoed. "You were… What does that even _mean_?"

She looked back up, pleading a desperate absolution from his stranger's eyes. "It doesn't even sound rational now but at the time I…" she trailed off again, stymied by his false face. "_God_… this is so _frustrating_. I can't even _talk_ to you through that thing…"

"Are appearances so important to you?" he asked coldly.

"That's _not_ what I meant and you know it."

"Do I?"

"I just wanted to _see_ you," she insisted. "Is it so wrong to want to be normal? Just for a _moment_?"

"Normal?" Kurt practically choked on the word. He took some steps away from her, thrusting his five-fingered hands into his brown hair.

"Is this about the cure?" he asked after a moment.

"No, it's—Of course not. Not in—"

"Piotr thinks I secretly want it, you know," said Kurt, turning back toward her, but keeping his distance. "He thinks my mutant pride is a put-on, that I'm secretly crying inside, being forced to live my life as… Well, as however Piotr would describe me."

Kitty frowned severely. "He _doesn't_ think that."

"Why not? It's what you think, isn't it? You and Logan both, always trying to convince me that what I really need to do is to stop hiding, that somehow just the act of appearing in public wearing my real face is going to provoke some great sea change of social acceptance. But you don't understand… It needs to be done carefully, so, so carefully. One wrong move and curiosity can turn to—" he stopped himself, swallowing back his heated, emotional words with a visible effort.

In a softer tone, he continued, "Don't you realize you could have been _hurt_, Katzchen? Don't you realize… I can't protect you from _them_ and _me_ at the same time?"

"Protect…?" Kitty stared at him, dumbfounded. "Is that what this is about? For _fuck's sake_, Kurt. I have been an X-Man since I was _thirteen years old_."

"And I've been protecting you that _whole time_. Do you not _see_ that?"

Kitty looked away, vision growing bleary with unwanted, bitter tears.

Kurt said, "You deserve happiness and I can't…"

The blood was draining from her face, draining from her face and her chest through her feet. "Don't do this Kurt. Don't you…_dare… _do this…"

But Kurt had already disengaged from the situation, his voice hollow, unfeeling, as he said, "I'm sorry."

"Wow," Kitty said, fighting hard to maintain an even tone. "That is… so _incredibly_… not good enough…"

"I'm… I'll find my own way back."

"Don't go, Kurt… Don't…"

But it was too late. Before she could say another word she was alone in the alley, with only the dissipating scent of brimstone for company.

Kitty concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as she walked back to the hotel and picked up her things before hiring a cab to drive her all the way back to Westchester. An hour later, she was back in her too-familiar room, boxed in by too-familiar walls and the omnipresence of too-familiar friends. The sense that she was sinking helplessly into the past was corroborated by the man who showed up at her door not fifteen minutes after her return.

Peter looked both enormous and tiny in the doorway, his body filling the space even as his pale, compassionate eyes and furrowed brow made him seem so much smaller.

"Katya. I hope this is not a bad time."

Kitty didn't say anything as she stepped back to let him enter, closing the door after him.

"I am sorry to come so late, but I could not sleep and I—"

He didn't get any further with his explanation as Kitty collapsed against his chest, sobbing freely into his sweatshirt. Peter wrapped his arms around her, and was silent.

[Kitty helped out Kurt with his mission to stop the resurrection of the demons in Nightcrawler #4]

**~ Chapter Two ~**

_**A few days later…**_

It wasn't a date. Kurt had made that as clear to Logan and Ororo as he had to Christine over the phone. He was just taking Christine out—he and his _team_ were just taking Christine out—to thank her for her help on the Metro General case.

Certainly, he hadn't intended to end up showering at her apartment. But after he'd gotten himself covered in ghost slime following their unexpected rescue of the passengers aboard the out-of-control subway car, Ororo had all but insisted on it. Kurt couldn't tell if Ororo was punishing him or trying to do him a favour. Either way, she wasn't particularly gracious about it. Neither, for that matter, was Logan, whose narrowed blue eyes Kurt deliberately avoided all the way from the subway tracks to the cab.

Half an hour later, Kurt stepped out of Christine's shower and grabbed himself a fresh towel from the rack. As he began the always slightly laborious process of drying himself, he caught a glimpse of his silhouette in the steam-coated full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. He slowed and then stopped, his hands growing limp and inoperable as a chill spread over his body, belying the bathroom's heat. As he approached the mirror, a dark outline with a slashing fork-tipped tail and claw-like hands copied his movements until he swiped the towel against the mirror and knew for sure he was looking at himself. He touched the mirror, staring deeply into the depthless, glowing eyes that suddenly seemed so unreadable even to their owner. Then he stepped back again, flexing his fists and rolling his shoulders as his tail swished in low curves between his legs, fully capable of finding its own way, its own rhythm, independent of his inner-turmoil. Surely, thought Kurt, someone had designed it to work that way. Surely, there must be some _purpose_…

He ran his tongue over his fangs inside his mouth as he tilted his face to the light, trying to catch the outline of his pupils. Then he touched his chest, pressing a section of his sleek fur flat against his pectoral muscle, remembering how it looked—how it _felt_—to be like that all over: smooth; human. He concentrated, tinting his skin to… What? What colour would his skin be if it weren't blue? Though he had the experience with the High Evolutionary's technology as evidence, how trustworthy had that magical-seeming process really been?

Finally, he released a deep sigh, running a tired, frustrated hand through his damp hair, disgusted by his insecurity. He tied his towel around his waist and swallowed hard as he readied himself to confront Christine.

When he entered the bedroom, Christine was sitting on the bed in sleep shorts and a tank top, her strawberry blonde hair tied up into a high ponytail. She was bent intently over her toenails, which she was painting a dramatic shade of red.

"Thanks for the shower, Christine."

"Not at all, Kurt. Anything to have you wandering around my apartment half-naked."

"Right…"

Kurt felt the warmth returning to his body as he absorbed what seemed to be the total normalcy of the scene, so opposite the nightmare world the bathroom had become. For several seconds after he entered the room, Christine didn't even look up, as though the sight of a half-naked, blue-furred mutant walking around her apartment was commonplace; or, Kurt realized, as though he _weren't_ a blue-furred mutant at all. With a pang, Kurt remembered the aftermath of the shower he'd shared with Kitty just days earlier—specifically, the moment he'd caught her staring at him, eyes glazed over in the grip of emotions he couldn't identify, thoughts he couldn't know. But he did know one thing—that for one awful moment he'd felt his heart drop nauseatingly into his stomach, conscious of a terrible conviction: _she's not seeing me_…

"So…" Kurt began deliberately. "About tonight? I should probably tell you…"

Christine looked up, pert and expectant. "Yes?"

"In the interest of being completely candid… We're just _friends_, Christine, right?"

Christine froze extracting the brush from her nail polish, a drop of blood-red liquid dripping unnoticed onto the bed.

"Wait, Kurt, are we… We're not going to have 'a talk,' are we?"

Kurt averted his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck. "I think… I think we might be, yes. A preemptive talk."

"Well, now I'm really confused," said Christine, screwing closed her nail polish and setting it aside. "I've dated enough men in New York City to have zero long-term expectations, and I know you have intimacy issues (at least according to VH1's 'behind the heroes special'), but… Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we _like_ each other?"

Kurt looked at her, drawn, despite himself, into her wide, hazel gaze. "As friends, yes."

"If you say the word 'friends' one more time…"

"I'm just trying to be completely upfront with you and not… lead you on."

Even as Kurt said the words he recognized how ridiculous they sounded; even his tail betrayed him, twitching nervously, coyly, beneath his towel.

"Is this because of you and… Storm?" asked Christine. "Because I couldn't help noticing earlier tonight that…"

Kurt followed her eyes to the kitchen, from where the sound was emanating.

"…Okay, what's that beeping?"

"My… my X-link in the next room," Kurt fumbled, suddenly very aware of how many seconds had gone by in which he'd tried to ignore the call. "I should probably…"

"Of course," Christine agreed. "But, Kurt, before you do and then have to run off and fight the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants or whomever…" She rolled her eyes back toward him, ironical demeanor turning serious. "If _you_ like me, and _I_ like you, it _can_ be just that for right now, you know."

Kurt's eyes lingered on her face for as long as he dared before he finally answered his X-Link.

"This is Kurt."

As he listened to Ororo's voice telling him he was expected at the mayor's office ASAP, Kurt was slightly taken aback by his sense of genuine regret.

After hanging up, he returned his attention to Christine.

"I don't suppose you have any clothes I could…"

"Not with tail holes in them."

"That's…" Kurt dropped his gaze, lips twitching with rueful amusement. "Is it strange that I sometimes forget about that?"

"It might be stranger if you were constantly thinking about it," Christine offered, smiling sympathetically as she got up off the bed and came to his side.

"Ja, I suppose you're right."

Turning toward her suddenly close body, Kurt looked down into her eager, uncomplicated eyes. Looking at her, his smile fell, though not from unhappiness. Instead, he felt a welcome calm washing over him, because the game they were playing was so easy to slip into. Short of their mischievous subtext, the words were just that, and it was so easy to know what to say, what to do; it felt like weightlessness after a decade of trying—and failing—to hold the world on his shoulders.

Kurt heard himself saying, "There are always traffic delays…"

"For a teleporter?" she questioned, eyebrow raised.

"Natural disasters…" he said, tilting his face toward hers, studying her pouting lips.

"…alien invasions…"

"…or perhaps the Avengers are fighting each other…"

She melted against him as he kissed her, wrapping her arms around his neck, her fingernails scratching through his hair as he squeezed her body against his, first with his hands and then, when he felt the enthusiasm of her reaction to the low groan he made in response to her exploratory manipulation of his fur, he used his tail, at which point Christine began pulling him forward, toward the bed.

Kurt pivoted at the edge of the bed to draw her down on top of him, enjoying the heavy, shifting weight of her thighs against his and especially the bouncing elasticity of her breasts under her cotton tank top. He ran his hands over them indulgently, outlining the contours of her body before she slid down on top of him and he reached up greedily for her lips.

It was as he was kissing her that he realized he'd lost track of his tail. As usual, it betrayed him, because as he concentrated on locating it, everything fell apart. Christine was still kissing him, still searching his mouth with her tongue, her firm, thinly-clad nipples rubbing against his. But even though Kurt knew and was aware of what was happening, he was no longer party to it. That her hips, breasts, thighs, and hands were not Kitty's—that the mind moving them over and against his body was not Kitty's—assaulted him like a bucket of ice water. A few days before, he'd been having sex with a best friend. Now, he was about to have sex with a stranger…

And then all he could see behind his closed eyelids was Kitty's face, the way she'd looked as she pleaded with him not to leave…

Still straddling his body, Christine pulled away uncertainly.

"Kurt? I know you're… I mean, I know you body is a bit _different_, but…"

Kurt was blinking his way out of a heavy fog . "What—Oh! No, those parts are all… Well, you know… _mostly_…"

"So then is there something I should—"

"No!" he protested again quickly before biting his lip. "I mean—no, it's not a problem. Not…" Kurt scrunched his eyes shut, mortified by his immaturity. After a moment, he tried again. "Getting inspired to make love to a beautiful woman doesn't usually present much of a problem, no."

"So then what…"

"I just… there's…" Kurt swallowed, bracing himself for the honestly he owed her. "The truth is, I was thinking of… someone else."

"_Oh_." Christine disengaged herself from his body, rolling over to sit up against the headboard next to him. "Is it… Ororo?"

"I—No, actually. It's… someone else."

"Are you seeing someone else right now?"

Kurt shook his head quickly. He pulled his own body up against the headboard, tightening the towel that still clung to his lower half.

"Of course not. Believe me, Christine, I would never…"

As he trailed off feebly, Kurt pulled his knees up enough to lean forward and grip his bare calves. He stared down at his own feet, toes curling over each other as his tail made a loop around his ankle, the most obvious manifestation of his desire to fold into himself.

"I'm not seeing anyone," he said at last. "But I _was_."

"I see," said Christine, carefully impassive. "And this is some kind of rebound thing, is that it?"

"No, I…" he sighed. "Maybe. I don't know."

Christine's eyes swept the room before resting on her newly-painted toes.

"Normally," she said. "This is where I'd tell you to get the hell out of here and never talk me again."

"That's… understandable."

"But," she added unexpectedly, turning to look at him and drawing in his gaze. "I know who you are. Judging by what I've seen of you over the course of the last week, and what I knew about you before that… I'm guessing you're not usually this much of an asshole."

Half of Kurt's mouth curved ruefully upwards. "I'd like to think not, but then, I'm not all that qualified to speak in my own defense right at the moment."

Christine smiled gently. "See, now, that's not the kind of thing an asshole would say."

"Can I use that as a quote on my book jacket?" he asked, starting to feel his own smile.

"Can you use what?"

"'Kurt Wagner's not a total asshole,' signed, Christine Palmer."

"Consider it done."

Kurt was quiet for a moment, reflecting on how much he liked the woman next to him, thinking that at a different time, in a different place…

"Can I tell you something?" he said at last.

"I guess so."

"I don't know whether this explains anything or not but… I've never made love to someone who was, well, 'normal' before. Aliens, sorceresses, mutants, yes. Normal human women—zip."

Christine gave a small shrug. "I've never made love to a mutant before. At least that I know of. But then, there's a lot more of us than there are of you."

"Is that your way of asking me what my excuse is?"

"I'm just saying—Are you _sure_ what you've got going on down there is totally kosher?"

Kurt arched a playful eyebrow. "Do I have to prove to you that I—"

"No," she said quickly. Her own teasing smile had returned, though it was undercut by a certain faraway mist behind her eyes. "I'm sure the girl you're in love with—whoever she is—probably wouldn't approve."

There were both quiet for a moment before Christine spoke again.

"Seriously, though. Do you guys just not get out much, or…"

"I'm pretty sure that's how the American public prefers it."

Christine looked at him. "Um, have you Googled yourself lately?"

Kurt made a face. "Is it that bad?"

Christine hesitated pensively.

"What?" Kurt prompted.

"I was just trying to decide whether 'bad' was the right adjective."

Kurt laughed, sick with nervous relief. Christine joined him, though their moment of shared levity quickly descended back into a slightly awkward silence.

Knowing he was taking a risk, Kurt said, "I know this is entirely the wrong thing to say, and I apologize in advance but… I really do like you, Christine."

Christine dropped her eyes. "Well, I guess that's _something_."

Kurt wasn't sure whether he should have stopped talking several sentences before. Regardless, he decided to cut his losses and make a hasty retreat; getting back into his slime-stained clothes seemed much less unappetizing than it had scant minutes before.

[Some of Kurt's conversation with Christine is from Nightcrawler #5]

**~ Chapter Three ~**

At exactly 4:37 pm on Thursday afternoon, Kitty found herself wedged under a computer console, face deep in tangled wires. In one hand she held a crumpled, water-stained circuit diagram and in the other a mini Phillips screwdriver; the flashlight was between her teeth.

Ever since she'd returned, Kitty had been spending at least half her free time during the day helping Hank to streamline the Mansion's various science labs, a perpetually troublesome blend of too many different, often experimental technologies, supplied by or scrounged from the likes of Stark Tech, S.H.I.E.L.D., Forge, and even the Shi'ar. The goal was to get all of the Mansion's labs and computers working reliably enough that someone besides Hank or Sage could actually use them without threatening to dislodge the whole delicate balance with one false keystroke (or misplaced elbow). Yet after one month and many hours of labour, they still seemed a long way from that goal.

Kitty managed to do exactly two turns with the Phillips before the needlepoint tip slipped out of the socket. Opening her mouth to swear, she dropped the flashlight and bashed her head against the metal ceiling of the console when she made a reflex gesture to recover it.

"Damn it!"

Kitty crawled out stiffly from under the console, rubbing her head more in annoyance than pain.

Her exclamations of frustration were common enough that Hank barely looked up from his own work, bent low over the counter making a thin, straight solder joint in a circuit board cradled in his large, paw-like hand.

"Problems?" he intoned.

"No."

"Because it sounds like there are problems."

Kitty sighed heavily. "I'm sorry. Everything just seems to be against me today."

"Just take a minute. We're not in any particular hurry."

Kitty snorted as she pushed herself to her feet. "Says you. I mean, look at this place."

Her eyes swept the dimly lit room, a mess of mismatched consoles, panels, and view screens jury-rigged together with a patchwork of welded metal panels and different-coloured extension cords—not to mention a lot of hope.

"Seriously, this is like the Frankenstein's monster of labs. How do you even work in here?"

Hank replaced the soldering iron in its holster and took out a screwdriver. "To each his own."

Kitty plopped herself down wearily in a three-wheeled chair across from Hank. As he worked, she found herself thoughtfully regarding his leonine face and form, from his slightly tapered snout down his thick neck to where his long, unruly blue fur seemed to stick out every which way from the straining collar of his black t-shirt. Kitty wondered vaguely whether Hank had ever been comfortable in clothes since the second stage of his mutation. The question was vague only because she knew it didn't matter; clothes were important to Hank as a symbol of his humanity, a crucial reminder to both himself and the rest of the world that he was more than just a beast.

After a long silence, Kitty said, "I know it's not my place but… Kurt had no right to chew you out in the meeting the other day."

"It's okay," Hank said, eyes on his work. "He's not wrong."

Kitty blinked, at least slightly taken aback. "But he's not completely right, either—Is he?"

"No," Hank agreed, giving the screwdriver a final, decisive turn before setting it down on the table. "But then, this might be one of those issues about which it's impossible to be completely 'right.'"

Kitty nodded as she stared off sightlessly into the middle distance.

After a moment, Hank said, "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

Leaning back slightly in his chair, Hank affixed her with his wide, catlike eyes, long, thin pupils expanded to their full width within their ochre frame. "I know you were… well… _afraid_ of Kurt when you first joined the team. Would you characterize it that way?"

"I… Yes."

"But you were never—at least to my knowledge—afraid of me. Why is that?"

"Well," Kitty began, pushing her disheveled hair off her brow with the back of her hand. "Probably because by the time I met you, I'd already seen a lot of pretty crazy stuff. But when I met Kurt… He was probably the craziest thing I'd seen up to that point."

As she paused, considering her words, Kitty actually found a small smile tugging at her lips, a gesture that Hank returned in his own, unique way.

"But that's not all. There's also…" Her smile fell as she trailed off, shaking her head. "Sorry. This is… sort of hard to talk about."

"Don't worry—I'm a doctor."

Kitty was grateful for the joke. "Well, I guess it's just that, you've always seemed to me like a—pardon the expression—'normal human' with a bunch of mutations layered on top. But Kurt is… different. Kurt's not separable from..."

"At least until the cure," Hank said softly.

"I can understand why you might want it," Kitty assured him. "Or at least, _some_ of why you want it. You want it to go _back_ to how you _were_. But for Kurt to take the cure, it would be like…"

Her fingers played almost childishly with the edge of her tank top as she conjured an image of him in her mind, her still-vivid memory of the first time she'd seen him fading into a recent, bright vision of his smiling face gazing down at her, haloed by a morning sunbeam.

_"So… What are we going to do today, mein prinzessin?"_

_ "First of all," she said, fingers snaking down his back, under the blankets. "We're going to stay right here for just a while longer."_

_ "Is that right?"_

_ "It's _fair_. Your sleepwalking tail kept me up half the night."_

_ "Ha! Lies."_

_ "How would you know? I'm the injured party here."_

_ "So tell me," he said, rough-soft hips bushing up against hers. "What does my tail do to you during the night?"_

_ "You know… things…"_

_ "Tell me."_

_ "Show me."_

_ "I thought you'd never ask…"_

Kitty said, "I like him the way he is, Hank."

Hank laid one of his heavy, clawed hands on her shoulder. "No one is trying to _force_ the cure on anyone."

Kitty produced a small, humourless sputter of laughter. "I said that exact same thing to Wing not a week ago. He didn't believe it, either."

Hank dropped his arm. "Is that what Kurt thinks?"

"No. Maybe. Who knows? I don't think Kurt knows what Kurt thinks. And I know I don't help."

"Are you sure about that?"

Kitty stared at her hands, cradled in her lap. She wanted to reply, but had no answer to give. How, she wondered, after eight years of friendship and nearly a full month of regular sex, could she still have such an incomplete conception of Kurt's thoughts, feelings, desires?

"Kitty…?"

"Sorry. I was just… thinking."

"Well, this mess certainly isn't going anywhere. Why don't you call it a day?"

"Yeah, I guess I am feeling kind of distracted. You're sure you're okay here?"

"Go," said Hank, clicking the "on" switch for the laser welder. "Though I'll warn you—the fun part's just about to begin."

"I'll take your word for it."

Just before going through the door, Kitty realized she'd forgotten her sweater. She turned back quickly and yanked it from the back of the chair near the door before pivoting back around again, right into Peter's chest.

"Oh! Sorry, I… Hey, how's it going?"

Peter squeezed her shoulder apologetically as he took a half-step backwards, "Were you… leaving?"

"Well, I _was_…"

"May I walk with you?"

"Uh… Sure. See you later, Hank."

"You kids have fun," said Hank, voice muffled behind his face shield; he was already leaning over a console with the glowing tip of the laser welder dangling precariously in his paw.

Kitty and Peter walked in silence to the elevator, at which point they nearly collided for the second time in as many minutes as each of them gestured for the other to enter first. After an exchange of embarrassed smiles, Kitty surrendered to Peter's chivalry and preceded him through the narrow door.

Kitty punched in the dormitory level and got down to the serious business of avoiding Peter's eyes, no easy task within the confines of the elevator.

"So why were you…"

"I just wanted to see you," he said. "To see how you were doing."

"I'm, you know, fine."

"Truly?"

"No. But… To be honest, Peter… This isn't really a conversation I want to have. With you. Right now."

"I understand. Forgive me."

"There's nothing to…" She released short breath. "Sure, I forgive you."

The elevator stopped, the door sliding open onto the maroon-carpeted dormitory hallway. Kitty forced a tight-lipped smile as she obeyed Peter's gesture for her to exit first.

"How are you doing, though?" she asked once they were both safely in the hallway, heading toward her quarters. "Do things really seem a lot different from before?"

"In some ways," said Peter. "But in other ways, it is as though nothing has changed."

Peter gave her a sidelong, meaningful look she continued to avoid. Not that it did her any good; avoiding the past was impossible since the hallway was lined with team portraits, from Hank's original squad in their matching yellow jumpsuits to Kurt and Peter's older, more idiosyncratic group through to her own era and past it. There was even a team picture of Excalibur, taken during Kurt's goatee-sporting stint as leader. In the photo, Kurt was at the right edge of the frame, smiling confidently enough to show the white tips of his upper fangs. His left arm was wrapped around Amanda's narrow, yellow-jump-suited waist; she, too, was smiling, though the whole of her expression was typically elusive. Kitty was at the left of the frame with Lockheed on her shoulder, half in front of Peter, who towered over her in his armoured form, resolutely unsmiling. For her part, Kitty just looked chagrined; it was the unmistakable expression of a teenager old enough to find portraits uncool but not old enough to appreciate posterity. Her erstwhile boyfriend, Pete Wisdom, was nowhere to be seen.

Peter said, "There were X-Men before us, there will be X-Men after us…."

Kitty gave a small, nonchalant shrug as she continued to watch the portraits scroll by. "Time passes."

"Does that ever bother you?"

"Does what bother me? Time?"

"Da."

"Sometimes," she admitted.

"And yet you become more beautiful with each passing day."

"Peter…"

"I am just being honest."

"I _doubt_ that."

"You should never doubt it," he said plaintively. "It is the truth."

By that time, they'd reached Kitty's quarters, and she was forced to turn and look at him, up into his open, genuine face. She sighed silently, feeling her first layer of defenses crumbling.

"But how are you really?" she asked sympathetically. "I know there's… a lot to get used to."

Now, it was Peter's turn to shrug. "The biggest change is Scott."

"What about him?"

"When I went away, he was the leader. Now, his balls wear white latex."

Kitty erupted with a burst of laughter, overwhelmed by the unexpected crassness of Peter's joke. She leaned back against the wall as she attempted to collect herself, wiping a tear of mirth from the corner of her eye. When her vision finally cleared, she saw Peter studying her seriously.

His deep Russian voice was rich with emotion as he said, "You are like the dawn when you smile."

Kitty dropped her eyes and her smile, feeling suddenly nauseous. It was all she could do to remain still as Peter bent down toward her.

At the last moment, Kitty turned her face away. "Stop."

Dutifully, Peter halted his descent. "I… I am sorry. I thought that… after the other night…"

"I'm…" Kitty swallowed painfully. "I don't know what's going on right now. With me and Kurt."

"I am sorry."

"It's okay. Just…"

"I will always be here for you, Katya."

"I know."

Kitty didn't move as he closed the rest of the distance, moving past her lips to her cheek, which he kissed lightly, but tenderly, his nose lingering at the edge of her hair, above her ear. Kitty trembled at the present and remembered sensation of his hot breath against her lobe, knowing that all of his breath, scent, and body were too familiar, had been too loved and for too long, to ever be wholly unwelcome.

Finally, wordlessly, Peter pulled away from her, looking deep into her captured eyes for one more heart-wrenching second before he turned, and began walking away from her, down the hallway.

Kitty waited until she saw him disappear around the corner before opening the door to her quarters. Once inside, she closed the door behind her and slid exhaustedly down the back of it, hitting the floor with a soft "thud."

Her eyes began to cloud with painful tears as she hissed quietly, to herself, under her breath, "God _damn_ it, Peter… God… _damn_ it…"

** ~ Chapter Four ~**

By the time Kurt finally made it back to the Mansion, it was well past midnight. And he was exhausted.

He flicked on the lights and did a quick survey of his room. Finding nothing amiss, he threw his jacket on a chair and began to undress, unbuttoning and peeling his filthy shirt off his body before removing his pants. Once he was down to his underwear, he paused, trying to decide what to do next. Sleep was out of the question; as exhausted as he was, he didn't trust his dreams. He considered taking another shower, but wasn't quite sure if he could trust that, either. And then he grew angry with himself, realizing how crazy that sounded. Was that really where he was at, now? Afraid of the sight of his own naked body in the mirror?

He swore at himself under his breath before throwing on some grey track pants and a clean white t-shirt, tossing his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper at the back of his closet.

Closing the closet door, he did a rapid double-take that did little to save him from the lightning-quick adamantium sucker-punch Logan aimed at his head.

The punch just missed hitting him squarely across the bridge of his nose, though its force and unexpectedness did manage to knock him clean off his feet.

Landing heavily on his backside, Kurt groaned as he touched his face reflexively.

"Unngh… What is… Were you in here this whole time…?"

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Logan demanded, glaring down at him with his fist clenched for an encore.

"I don't…" Kurt squinted at him, too confused to be angry. "What is it _you_ think I'm doing?"

Logan growled, "I gave you the benefit of the doubt about the nurse honey thing because I owed you one. But then you go back to her _apartment_ with her? Did you fuck her because God help me—"

"_No_. Not that it's any of your…" as he pushed himself to his feet, Kurt was distracted out of his retaliation by three large gobs of blood that dropped from his nose onto his t-shirt-clad chest, diffusing elliptically as they made contact. "… schiesse…"

Logan ground his teeth as he watched Kurt try to stem the flow of the bleeding with the back of his hand, succeeding only in staining his indigo fur maroon.

"C'mon," he grumbled. "Lemme help you with that. I'll yell at you more once you're not bleeding all over yourself."

"Danke. That's considerate of you."

Wordlessly, Logan led the way into the bathroom. Still holding his nose, Kurt hopped up the counter next to the sink. Logan handed him a wad of toilet paper that Kurt used to wipe his hand before pressing it tightly under his nostrils, tilting his head back. A few minutes later, when he was sure the bleeding had stopped, Kurt tossed the bloody paper into the toilet bowl, pulling his stained t-shirt off over his head before accepting the damp facecloth Logan held out to him. Kurt rinsed the now-dried blood away from the outside of his nose before handing the towel back to Logan, who wet it again in cold water for Kurt to apply to his already swelling cheek.

"You need ice for that," Logan observed.

"Ja," Kurt agreed.

They were both silent for several more minutes. Logan leaned against the wall next to the sink, arms crossed, staring down at his cowboy boots. Kurt gazed sightlessly at the blank wall directly across from him, right eye half-closed, concentrating on the steady throb of pain spreading over his face.

Finally, Logan said. "I'm sorry I hit you."

Kurt attempted a snort of almost delirious laughter, which he immediately regretted. "Ow."

"But what the hell did you think you were—"

"I don't know, I just—"

"Are you and Kitty still together?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"But you still care about her."

"Of _course_. How could you even—"

"Sorry. I'm not… I'm sorry."

They were both silent for a moment, atoning for their shared guilt.

"We had a fight," Kurt said at last. "Kitty, she… We were kissing—in public, outside the History Museum—and she turned off my inducer without telling me."

"Did anything happen?"

"I got us out of there before anything _could_."

"Why would she do something like that?"

"Because she…" Kurt trailed off, releasing a small breath. "I don't know."

"Hm."

"She makes me so nervous, Logan. Having sex with her, everything usually makes sense. But then, sometimes she just… she _looks_ at me, and I can't tell what she's _thinking_…"

"Maybe she likes what she sees."

Kurt looked at him, his blood-stained hand and the damp, discoloured towel still obscuring half his face; one eye was pinched with pain, the other wide with disbelief.

Logan said, "Don't you think the fact you can't believe that might be part of the problem?"

Kurt looked away, removing the towel from his face and dropping it into the sink.

"You asked me if I had sex with Christine," he said. "The truth is I _wanted_ to. But I actually… I _couldn't_, Logan. Even as I was kissing her, I just… I _couldn't_."

Kurt closed his eyes wearily, running a hand through his hair that he then used to grip the back of his neck. "I haven't felt this insecure since I was thirteen years old. Sometimes my own hands seem strange to me, my reflection in the mirror looks like a stranger. Or something worse…"

"Pete was right, wasn't he? You're not as sure as all that."

Kurt dropped his arm back to his side, shaking his head. "I don't want the cure. Not seriously. But then, things did seem easier when we didn't have a choice."

"They always do."

"But the thing that really troubles me is that when she did it, and I had to turn and confront a growing crowd in my true form with Kitty in my arms, I was so… _angry_. Not at her. Not even at myself, but… I was just _angry_."

"You got a right to be," Logan assured him. "There's nothing wrong with—"

"Nein, but there is Logan. There is so _much_ wrong with it."

Logan wasn't immune to the irony of Kurt's statement, which he accorded another moment of silence.

"So… what are you going to do?"

"I don't…" Kurt watched his tail twitching next to his foot. "I don't know."

"Logan," he began again after a moment, still staring down at his half-naked indigo body. "Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like, how it might have been different if you… if you weren't…"

"Well, first of all I'd be dead."

Kurt had nothing to say to that.

In the interests of peacekeeping, Logan offered, "What about you?"

"It's impossible for me to imagine," said Kurt. "It was because of my mutation that I grew up at the circus so… I can't really imagine anything else."

"Seems boring, doesn't it?"

"Perhaps. But boring sometimes has its advantages."

"Not worth dwelling on," Logan insisted.

Kurt nodded sadly, gaze wandering away toward the walls. Logan shifted his weight, crossing and re-crossing his arms over his chest.

"'Sides," he said. "If I weren't a mutant, I'd never have met you."

Kurt's eyes shot quickly over to the face of his friend, a face which, since entering the bathroom, had maintained only its resolution. Kurt swallowed, felt his throat catch, and wondered how his day could get any worse. His tail curled around his ankle as he dropped his head, chewing the inside of his lip.

"Kurt…" Logan's voice was soft, pleading. "You can't… What can I say to…What can I—"

"Nothing, nothing…"

Logan unfolded his arms and moved in closer, reaching across to squeeze the side of Kurt's neck, massaging the connecting tendons with his thumb. Kurt released a shuddering sigh under his friend's touch, retreating into himself against the desperate urge to surrender to its comfort. But when Logan's hand slipped further down his back he could fight it no longer, the frantic need to be steadied under Logan's heavy, confident hands.

Silently, exhaustedly, Kurt dropped the uninjured side of his face against Logan's collarbone, feeling Logan's pulsing heartbeat washing away the throb of his own pain. Logan rested his chin against the top of Kurt's head, one hand gripping the back of his neck, the other lying still against his shoulder blade. For minutes, Kurt allowed himself to drift, inhaling the sharp smell of Logan's skin, his breath synchronizing against the swell and contraction of his chest.

"I don't know what to do, Logan," he mumbled brokenly. "I don't…"

Logan held him until his heartbeat slowed, and his scent mellowed. When Kurt finally pulled away, he left behind a trace of blood and moisture on his friend's plaid shirt.

"You okay, now?" Logan asked, still holding Kurt's bare shoulders.

Kurt's attempt at a deep breath ended up being more of a dried-blood snuffle. "Ja."

"It's not too late. Go to her. Tell her how you—"

Kurt shook his head, staring at Logan's chest. "Nein. No, that's not… It was always too late, Logan. It was always…"

"Make sure."

"You're my best friend, Logan."

"I know."

"I can't lose both of you."

"Since when are you losing me?"

"I don't know. Things have been…"

"Can you just… Talk to her. Talk to Kitty."

"Ja."

"Now."

"I… Ja."

After an awkwardly still moment, Kurt cleared his throat.

"Logan, I need to…"

Logan released Kurt's body and waited for him outside the bathroom as he did his best to clean himself up, washing away the last of the dried blood from his face and hand.

After Kurt had emerged from the bathroom and pulled on yet another fresh t-shirt, Logan said, "So you're gonna go talk to her?"

Kurt nodded. "I can't wait any longer. And things cannot… They can't go on like this."

Logan nodded back, heading for the door. Midway past the threshold, he paused, turning to look at Kurt.

"And elf? I just want you to know that I… I meant what I said."

Kurt didn't have to ask which part. He knew. Logan passed through the door and was gone.

** ~ Chapter Five ~**

When she heard the knock on her door just past one in the morning, Kitty knew it had to be one of three things: Peter, Kurt, or an emergency. Wrenching open the door, she was determined to be angry at any of the three possibilities. Yet when she confronted Kurt's face, indigo fur darkened almost black by a large, fresh bruise around his squinting, golden eye, her resolve melted dramatically. She immediately stepped back to let him enter even as she raised a tentative hand, stopping just short of touching him.

"Are you okay? What happened?"

"Logan," Kurt said simply, stepping past her into the room.

Kitty closed the door after him. "What… Really?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I—Okay."

Kurt walked into the centre of the dimly lit room and stopped. Kitty, too, felt rooted to the floor, staring at Kurt's back, watching his tail swish languidly.

Finally, she said, "I really hope I'm not the first one to tell you this, but you and Logan do _not_ have a healthy relationship."

"I'm not here to talk about me and Logan, Katzchen."

"Yeah. I figured. That would've been too easy."

Kurt crossed his arms over his chest, shaking his lowered head. "I don't even know where to begin."

"Then let me," said Kitty, making a move to close the distance between them. She went to Kurt's side and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. Kurt, I am so, so, sorry…"

"You don't… No, I'm sorry. The way I reacted was not—"

"So we're both sorry. Now what do we do?"

"I have no idea."

"Do you still want to be together?"

"Yes… and no."

"Oh."

Genuinely surprised, Kitty removed her hand from his shoulder.

"I guess this is probably a dumb question," she said, voice sounding hollow in the too-quiet room. "But, do you want to tell me why? I mean, is this just about what happened the other day, or…"

"No, it's… it's me. Lately I've just been…"

"_Lately_?"

Kurt's eyes flickered over her for the first time since entering the room.

"We never really talked about it," he said. "Right after the first time, we had that fight, and then…"

Kitty forced a grin, hoping to cajole him out of what she hoped was a temporary mood. "It's not my fault I can't keep my hands off you."

But her smile quickly fell as she witnessed Kurt's reaction to her joke.

"That's the problem, though, isn't it?" he said bitterly, a strange, faraway look in his always depthless eyes. "This isn't kids, a house, evenings out, or even walks in the park. This is just us sharing a bed at a live-in highschool."

Kitty's blinked. "Are you saying you think our relationship is just sex?"

"No. But you have to admit, most of the time we've spent together this past month has been in bed—or at least in the vicinity of it."

"We've been busy," Kitty insisted, unnerved by how precisely his words mirrored her own thoughts from several days before. "And it's not as though we're strangers who need to go through some kind of 'getting to know you' phase."

"I want to believe you."

"So _believe_ me," she urged.

Kurt uncrossed his arms and took several steps away from her, pausing by her computer desk, his eyes lingering on the photos there, of Peter, and of the X-Men. There were no pictures of her and Kurt, not since they'd become more than friends.

"Do you know why I left the priesthood?" he asked her. "Why I _really_ left? It wasn't just because I found out I was being brainwashed and manipulated. Even before that, I had Stacy X throw herself at me. Remember her? Mutant pheromone powers? She made one pass at me and I knew—_knew—_that I couldn't live my whole life that way, without the touch of a woman, without the feel of a woman's body under my hands."

"That's not…" Kitty fumbled, unnerved by his confession and trying to sort out her place in it. "That's _normal_, Kurt. You told me yourself you think celibacy isn't healthy."

Kurt shook his head. "But the way it happened, to have that be the catalyst… That wasn't a _rational_ decision. That was me throwing away everything I'd been trying to accomplish for almost _two years_ because I was bitter about missing out on getting laid by a woman whose mutant power was being the world's greatest prostitute."

Kitty ran a hand through her loose hair, stalling for time.

"I had no idea you felt this way about things," she said after a moment. "It's not _weird_, Kurt. You're just… a _guy_."

Kurt sounded very distant when he replied, "I would think you've had enough access to my body over the past month to appreciate how it's not _quite_ like other men's."

Kitty was starting to understand, though she didn't particularly like the conclusions she was drawing. It had been some time since she'd consciously considered the reality of Kurt's bodily difference, at least on a sexual level. _Was_ his body fundamentally different? Did sex really work so much differently for someone with fur, or a tail? She knew the way his body responded to her touch but that didn't tell her all that much about how it really felt to be inside his skin. Kitty felt a bit guilty that she hadn't spent more time thinking about the issue; but then, in all the years she'd known Kurt, she's been trying so hard to convince herself that he _wasn't_ different.

She said, "But nobody can ever know how it feels to be someone else. Not really."

"Some differences are still more different than others."

Kitty narrowed her eyes at his back, his weary shoulders, lowered head, and heavy tail. Even her compassion had limits, and she drew the line at accepting the entirety of the blame for Kurt's insecurity.

"Is this really a sex thing," she questioned, "or just a sex with _me_ thing?"

Kurt didn't answer. Kitty stood for a long moment closing and opening her hands, arms hanging straight at her sides. Finally, her hands clenched into battle-ready fists and stayed there.

"You know what?" she said, voice crisp like flames as she addressed his back. "_Fuck_ you. Fuck you and your stupid Catholic guilt bullshit that says you've got no right to the things you want. You don't think I live it, too? You think it doesn't _affect_ me? You think just because I look 'normal' that I don't feel different, alien, inhuman, every time I step out in public with an 'X' on my chest? When I meet the eyes of some new mom who clutches her kid against her like I might be contagious?"

Kurt didn't reply but the changed rhythm of his tail let her know he was listening.

Once again, Kitty closed some of the distance between them. When she continued, her tone was quieter, though no less stern.

"What I did in New York was wrong," she told him. "And I'm _sorry_ about that. But you have to understand: I did it because of the way I feel about you, because I couldn't take the unfairness of it and it overwhelmed me for a minute. I admit I'm not used to dealing with what you have to deal with day in and day out, every day of your whole life. How could I be? But that doesn't mean I'm not trying to understand. I need you to admit to me, though, that you sometimes feel the same way I did. I need you to admit to me that sometimes… you really, truly, _desperately_ long to be normal."

By the time she finished speaking, she'd moved in close, so that when Kurt looked up, his one pinched and one wide eye glowing damply, their faces filled each other's vision.

When Kurt spoke his voice was steady—honest, but cool. "What I _want_ is to _not_ want that. And you, being with you, in this way… it _makes_ me want it. Not because I think you want it. But I'm too used to protecting you not to feel…"

At the invocation of feelings his veneer cracked, a kind of fractured, unsteady warmth creeping back into his voice.

"I need to protect you, Katzchen. I've spent too many years making that my mission not to hate myself more than I ever thought possible for hurting you. I know, know it in every fibre of my being… that you are _safer_ without me."

Kitty's brow crinkled in angry confusion. "This isn't some superhero-civilian thing—we're _both_ in this business."

"It's not just…" Kurt blinked his eyes shut and took a small breath before continuing. "There are other ways for a person to be hurt, Katzchen," he said softly.

Kitty implored his injured face. "But isn't that my decision to make?"

"It is also mine," said Kurt. "And I'm deciding that I can't do this. Not… Not right now. Not…"

Kurt bent his face away. But Kitty didn't let him escape, turning him back toward her with a gentle hand. Almost hating the heart-sickening familiarity of the gesture, she dropped her forehead against his, sweeping her hands up the back of his neck into his hair, as Kurt slid his hands around her waist, into the small of her back.

"Let me…" Kurt swallowed. "Let me tell you about Florida."

"You don't—"

"Please."

"…Okay."

"It was my first trip to America," he said, thumb circling her vertebrae. "I went with a man—a circus promoter—because I… Well, it's the land of dreams, isn't it? America is where movies come from. America is the _big time_. But when I got there, to this horrible gutter of a place in rural Florida, the promoter drugged me, and when I woke up I was in a cage, the kind of cage an animal lives in, with straw and food and water in bowls on the floor. Of course, when I say 'woke up,' I mean it in the loosest possible sense; I was there for two weeks but it all seems like one tangled dream, just fractured images of leering faces and pointing fingers, of men making their wives and girlfriends scream by throwing debris into my cage, trying to get me to… Who knows? Attack them? Introduce myself? …Did they know I was human, or did they just not care?"

Kitty struggled to absorb his words. She felt thirteen again, trying and failing to grasp an adult world that seemed as dark and frightening as it was also necessary. Hearing the story from his lips was like listening to a prophet returned from a vision of the apocalypse. Despite everything, despite all their years of friendship and all the wonders she'd seen and experienced in her eight years as an X-Man, it was beyond her to imagine how Kurt could live with such a memory, when she could barely stand the pain of hearing him recount it.

"I can't believe someone could do that to you," she said, voice catching. "I can't _believe_…"

"The worst part," Kurt continued, his own voice almost eerily calm, "is that after a while, in my drug-addled state, I think I almost started convincing myself that I deserved to be there, that maybe it was my life before that was the aberration, the dream. And that's the feeling I still can't shake off, not knowing which is real and which is…"

No longer able to control herself, Kitty began to tremble, frantic in her impossible need to comfort him, all at once offering up her soul for the chance to reach back in time and save him, to phase through the bars of his prison and gather up his scattered self in her arms.

Absorbing her obvious distress, Kurt squeezed her tight, nuzzling her ear with his lips.

"It's okay," he said gently. "It's… Please, it's okay. _Please_."

"_You're_ comforting _me_, now?" she managed to kid, however feebly.

"For me, it was a long time ago."

"So then why are we still talking about it?"

Kurt rubbed his cheek against hers, the subtle friction of his sleek fur producing the characteristic tickle at the back of her throat. His tail rested heavily against her thigh.

"Because time does funny things," he said. "Sometimes, it seems to go very fast, and sometimes…"

"How can I go back to how it was?" she blurted. "How can I see you and not want to touch you? It's… I don't know if I can do that."

"Me neither, but I can bear losing you altogether even less."

He pulled away enough to look her into the eyes, eyes that she knew were twitching with volumes of unshed tears.

"I love being with you, Katzchen," he said. "I love waking up to your face, I love coming home to you. I love kissing you, touching you. I love the way you... I love all of those things. But all of that only seems to work at the expense of everything else. And I can't close out the whole world. Don't you see? That would be like me putting you—putting us both—in that cage. We'd have each other, but it is _all_ we'd have."

Kitty clutched him tight again, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, feeling the beat of his heart in her face.

"Kurt… Aren't you ever afraid we'll run out of time?"

"Yes," he admitted gravely, his hand reaching up into her hair, cupping her skull. "I'm very afraid of that."

"Do you remember when we fought the Brood?"

"You saved my life."

"I would have died if you died. I knew that even then."

"I'm not going anywhere, Katzchen. I just need…"

"I know. I know…"

"I'm not saying forever."

"Sure."

She ran her hands down his body as she released him, trying to memorize the feel of him under her hands. More than anything, she wanted to kiss him, worried she wouldn't get another chance. But then she dared not, fearing the magic would be gone. Or, she realized, maybe she was suddenly worried in a way she wouldn't have thought possible that the magic had never really been there to begin with. Kurt was right—doubt was the most deadly enemy.

Her voice was tight as she said, "Just… don't be a stranger, okay?"

"Of course not," he assured her, offering a weak smile. "After all, I just live down the hall. We will probably see each other almost every day."

Even as she forced herself to smile back, mobilizing the wealth of her self-control to swallow back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her, Kitty knew he was lying. They both were. The way back was gone and the way forward so uncertain it was unknowable, unfathomable. And it was then that she recognized the lesson about adulthood she would take from the month she'd opened her bed, her body, and her heart to her best friend: she had learned the necessity of hiding her true feelings—that sometimes, repression could be less painful than action, could, in fact, be a tool of survival.

When he left, golden eyes sparing her one final meaningful but impenetrable glance, it felt like the most total goodbye she'd ever known. Little did she know how true that premonition would become. Or that the lesson Kurt taught her about adulthood would soon become very useful.

**~ Epilogue ~**

When Kitty found out Kurt was dead—from Hank, not from Peter, whose deep eyes held but could not communicate the tragedy—she couldn't cry. Literally. Trapped in her phased state, she contained no liquid, making tears a physical impossibility. Then by the time she could cry, she'd grown numb to the memory of her pain, numb, even, to the fact of it. It was the only way she could survive. Especially now, headmistress of a rebuilt Mansion infested with a tiny army of distorted, gremlin versions of him, creatures that didn't seem sentient except sometimes when she'd catch one looking at her in the most unsettling way…

And as of yesterday, things had gotten even worse. Yesterday, she'd seen him again, gathered his living, breathing self him up in her arms only to lose him again in the same moment.

Kitty was digging the flesh out of a grapefruit when Logan stumbled groggily into the kitchen, wearing a less-than-clean-looking grey t-shirt and the bottom half of his white and black uniform. Wordlessly, he riffled through the cupboard before withdrawing a bowl and a dented box of Lucky Charms. He grabbed a carton of milk from the fridge and joined Kitty at the table.

At any other time, Kitty might have smiled at the spectacle of the mighty Wolverine enjoying a bowl of sugar cereal, but not now. Not after yesterday.

Logan gulped down three massive, brightly coloured spoonfuls before he spoke.

"I wanted to tell you that I'm really sorry about… I didn't want you to find out that way. It wasn't something I planned, it just…"

Kitty tried to continue with her grapefruit but her hand stubbornly refused to obey her. She set down her spoon and turned her full attention on Logan.

"Are you talking about X-Force, or your new best friend?"

"I was talking about Kurt," he said. "The _other_ Kurt. If you want to talk about anything else, you're gonna have to wait until at least afternoon."

Kitty's gaze wandered away toward the window.

"He really does look like him, doesn't he? It's so…"

Her heart had more than stopped when he entered the room; it had frozen and cracked, uncovering a warmth she didn't know how much she missed until she felt it again, until she remembered how good it could feel not to have to steel herself against an incurable pain at every moment of the day and night. Every piece of her knew immediately and with an unshakeable conviction that it was him. His body and his bearing were exactly as she remembered them, his acrobat's frame with its taught muscles and narrow waist, the rolling rhythm of his walk and the accompanying sashay of his tail. Everything was as it should be except—

"His eyes, though—What's wrong with his eyes?"

"Don't know. Genetic quirk or somethin'."

"And is he… older?"

"I think so. Little bit."

When she'd thrown her arms around him, feeling for two glorious seconds the familiar contours of his body, her tears finally welled up, all the tears she'd stored away over all the long, lonely months she'd forced herself not to feel. In that moment, she swore to herself on everything she held dear that she would never, ever, let him go again.

Yet it was in the very midst of that promise that he'd pushed her away—violently, brutally, treating the depth of her love as an infecting plague. If anything, this second loss was worse in its immediacy, and its irony. It was a specific kind of torture having him so tantalizingly near and unreachable in the same instant. And for a whole different reason, Kitty still couldn't cry.

"Is he… much like Kurt?"

"No."

"So why are you hanging out with him?"

"You know me," Logan drawled between bites. "I'm good at sight, hearing, smell. Less good at anything beyond that. I can tell you that he looks, sounds, and smells right. But even I know—He's not Kurt."

"Who are you trying to convince?"

Cereal finished, Logan abandoned his spoon in the bowl's leftover milk and leaned back in his chair.

"I just don't want you to get your hopes up," he said. "He's a dangerous guy and I don't want you getting mixed up with any of that. And he doesn't know you, never met you where he comes from. So you're even more of a stranger to him that he is to—" he stopped himself, and dropped his eyes. "Anyway."

"You're defending him now?"

"No. But he hasn't had the best life. I know—I saw where he comes from."

Kitty stared at the backs of her hands, lying still against the table top.

"I've never cried about it, you know? At first I couldn't and then…"

Kitty drew Logan's gaze back toward hers. "How did he… when I was… gone…"

"It wasn't great."

Kitty didn't need to be a telepath to know how much remained unspoken in Logan's words. But she didn't have the energy to pry. Knowing the full details of Kurt's reaction to her own seeming death wouldn't make her feel any better.

With sudden intensity, she hissed, "We were such _idiots_, Logan. Such stupid, _fucking idiots_. Why couldn't we make it work? Why couldn't we…"

She was distracted by a flicker of movement at the corner of her eye. It was one of the gremlins, its tiny, indigo tail swishing a steady rhythm at the edge of the window. Kitty zeroed in on the motion as though hypnotized.

"Was it my fault, Logan?" she asked, voice drained of emotion.

Logan snorted humourlessly. "Was it mine?"

The gremlin poked its head into the window, Kitty catching a fleeting glimpse of its golden eyes before it bounded away.

Kitty continued to stare out through the now-empty window. In the same flat, emotionless voice, she intoned, "It was just… bad timing."

"Yeah," Logan agreed. Then, "Do you want some cereal?"

"Okay."

Logan got her a bowl and sat down in the chair next to hers as he poured them each a fresh batch of o's and marshmallows.

"He loved you, kiddo. You know that, right?"

"Yeah."

They ate in silence for a minute before Logan swallowed, and said, "Felt like my heart was cut out. The first time I saw him."

"I felt like… mine was put back in."

The kitchen was silent except for the sound of their chewing, as the amber curtain of the sun grew longer on the table.

**~END~**

[Context for this scene is the Wolverine and the X-Men ongoing. Kitty meets Kurt Darkholme—Kurt's counterpart from the AoA universe—in Uncanny X-Force #19]


End file.
